Designers and illustrators know the drill: "It would be great if we could see something today."
This assignment to create an infographic for a new "Jobs" initiative the Province of British Columbia is developing turned out to be a lot of fun despite its compressed time-frame. My manager,
Andrew Pratt, had already doodled a concept for the piece. Andrew stressed he wanted to include "Lego men."
Thankfully, he had located many of the resources and statistics for the piece and there was no size constraint aside from width. So I quickly roughed out a concept on paper (for the most part) to set my mind straight.
Working with population statistics is fine, but these tables proved to be somewhat onerous.
Tara Kerner-Marsh, my co-worker and fellow designer, had already typeset many of her infographics with Sebastian Lester's
Neo Sans, so it was an easy decision to use this typeface.
Creating the colour palette, too, was an easy task given
Cossette West, the communications agency charged with much of the province’s advertising, had contracted
Dare in Vancouver to devise the "Canada Starts Here" identity for the initiative. By-the-way, Dare is a "brand building agency for a digital world, not a cookie company" according to
Rob Sweetman, their Executive Creative Director.
One of the enjoyable tasks was creating Andrew's "Lego men" icons of the top B.C. industries hiring over the next 10 years: Sales and Service; Business, Finance and Administration; Trades, Transport and Equipment Operators; Management; Social Services, Education, Government and Religion; Health and the Natural and Applied Sciences. I am a big fan of the
Always with Honor crew from Portland, OR. It's probably obvious, eh?
I didn't use Lego's face for the figures, but after a simple exploration I arrived at something that was suitable and in keeping with Andrew's vision.
Drawing the icons with Adobe Illustrator went quite quickly once I developed a base mannequin (the green gent on the left). I added to or subtracted from him depending on the costume. Yellow seemed the obvious colour choice for their skin and a homage to Lego.
The completed industry icons.
Developing some of the charts was also a bit of fun. Andrew had created a "British Columbia in Squares" map a while ago. I thought this would lend a clean, high-tech appearance to the piece. However, when coupled with the economic regions of the province, the thing (below) became a mess. I abandoned it for a more conventional map of the province.
The chart to the right of the more conventional map (below) breaks down the anticipated number of job openings per economic development region. It was almost a no-brainer to use small, iconic people for this.
Total working time was probably 6 hours from start to finish, not including the hemming and hawing. Once the initiative is announced, I'll link you to the site to see the finished graphic.
