For this project we had to come up with our own brief, ideas based on a design problem or question. I wasn’t sure what I should do, so I came up with a list of things that interest me. Also I came up with design questions or problem for of each subject. Crime , Too much young people dying, going to jail and on the street. Stereotypes, Why are there stereotypes why do we have to be categorized? Music, Everything is now digital i.e. iTunes, what happened to album artworks? Caribbean, Is not really noticed until carnival or honeymoon.Education/Career, With the price cuts how will people further their education or get a job after graduation? WWE/TV, Huge fan and I watch it all the time Food, Why is “healthy” food more expensive than “non-healthy” food? Typography and Corporate Identity, Something I’ve always been interested in. After presenting my ideas to the group and discussing each subject matter I decided go with the Caribbean idea. The design question/problem I had about the Caribbean was, why it is not really noticed until carnival or honeymoon?

My work will be situated around the Caribbean and how its not really noticed until carnival season or when people want to take a holiday. I want to show that the Caribbean culture and exports are a big part of Britain and especially London. I started off by researching the history of Caribbean produce and how they were exported. I looked at the different products that was exported from the Caribbean countries and the most popular. Like Antigua, Barbados and Guadeloupe’s major export are bedding, handicrafts, textiles and electronic components. Dominican Republic major exports are coffee and tobacco. Jamaica major export is Bauxite and Grenada major export is Nutmeg.

I was advised by my tutor to look at a speech that David Cameron gave on Multiculturalism in Britain. After watching the speech I was so annoyed because I disagreed with everything that he said. I believe that London is one of the most diverse cities in world, there are some many different cultures within Britain. Which makes London what it is today because we embrace and learn from the different cultures. So saying that is the Caribbean really only noticed around carnival time?, knowing that in certain parts of London I could go into a shop and get Caribbean products. I wanted to address this finding out in my design ideas but I focus wanted to focus on the design problem/question I phrased in the beginning.

I collected enough research on the history of Caribbean exports but I wanted to start collecting data so I could start my design ideas. I started looking for data that would have the information I needed and I came across quite a few website such as International Monetary Fund and Trade Map, but they didn’t have right information I needed. Then after more researching I came across World Factbook which had everything I needed from what each country exported and how much they made from exporting their products. So I started noting down the valuable pieces of data that I needed.

After I noted down the data I needed I put it together in data sheet so it was more clearer and easier to understand and to work with. I then started thinking about how I would show this data in my designs. My intentions are to use visual research and data to illustrate other reasons why the Caribbean is well known in Britain apart from “The Carnival Season.” Like using information design to show how many Caribbean restaurants are in London and showing what things the countries in the Caribbean export. I came up with the idea of covering each country with their flag, using the clipping mask option in Photoshop.

Before I started to do some designs on Caribbean exports, I bought two books on Information Design to help give me some inspiration. The books are Information is Beautiful and Visual Aid 2. Looking at these books was really good and helpful, the stuff that’s in there is amazing they’ve made great designs out of useful and useless information.

The scanned images above are from the books Information is Beautiful and Visual Aid 2. I chose those images because I felt like they related to my project and what I wanted to produce. Also chose them because get just show the many different ways you can visualise, produce and design information that is appealing to the eye.

My first idea was to show how much each country earn from their exports so I started doing some initial designs by experimenting with the clipping mask option on the countries. In the second image I arranged the countries in size order according to how much they earn from their export, just showing the highest earning countries and showing what they earned. Then the next images I added the other countries arranging them in size order depending on how much they earned.

In the first image I added the keys section to show which flag belonged to which country. Then in the second image I tried showing how much the countries earn using a chart but I didn’t like the style or the layout and the chart wasn’t clear. So I decided to redesign it which is what I did in image three, which I think looks bettter and much more clearer and easier to understand.

I did another design on how much each country earns from their exports, but this time I decided to lay the countries out, how they would be on the atlas map. Then labelled each country with how much they earned. In the next image I decided to focus more on what the countries exported so I had the countries still shaped in the Caribbean atlas map, but this time I added key images that represent the main exports and linked it with the countries that export them. In the third image I decided to show the same data in a different format this time I used a bar chart.

For my final idea I wanted to show how the Caribbean culture has a big affect on London by have a map of London and to locate the different Caribbean Restaurants by placing a flag on the location. Unfortunately due to lack timing and not being able to properly locate the location of each Caribbean restaurant in London, so I decided do a mock design to show what it would look like.