Mock up of info graphic of dragonflies.
Visual Info Graphic about Dragonflies and what 100 of the little creatures might be like.
I have created this little info graphic of one of the worlds smallest and oldest creatures. The dragonfly. It is an amazing creature that has inspired artists and scientists alike for decades. Leonardo Da Vinci himself has a model of what the wings of a dragonfly can do. The used dragonflies to model satellites that currently orbit our earth and are sending this information to your computer or other device right now.
This was a really fun project to do. I started out finding interesting facts about dragonflies. Their size, history, life-cycle and eating habits. I then used this data to brainstorm some digital sketches for my intended info graphic.
Digital Sketches
Sketching is a fantastic way to help visualize your ideas. I found that it is not easy to explain the size of dragonflies with comparisons. Even though it is an awesome fact that 100 dragonflies lined up would be the length of Washington's nose on mount Rushmore, I could not digitally show this is a manner that was understandable or pleasing to the user. So by default we get the giraffe, which is visually striking and easily displayed. Trying to show how a deer weighs about the same as 9.9 million mosquitoes was also a challenge. The scale is good, but a little cliche. The tiger eats a deer and is a striking visual.
Below you will see my first attempt at the info graphic as a whole. I did some user testing and was inspired to make the refinements you have seen above, based on the feedback. I kept my age of user as varied as possible 9 -66. I wanted the information to be appealing to all age and knowledge sets.
