Infographic

I’ve been fascinated about the process of evolution since I was a young child. The fact that random chance and natural selection could, over millions of years, create something as complex as the human body is something that I still find awe-inspiring. So, when given the opportunity to make an infographic, I took it as a chance to learn a little more about something that interested me and to create a design that I found the most engaging. I wanted to emulate the science posters I’d often see in my mother’s classroom while I was growing up.

Ideation

I gathered images from various types of infographics and compiled them into a more informational moodboard. I chose the eye over other various body parts since it not only is a very complex organ, but because the development of sight shook the very foundation of the predatory hierarchy. Animals without sight were set to the bottom of the foodchain, and it set off an arms race of visual development.

Research

I read many articles and papers that discussed this very topic. In my ignorance, I thought that sight similar to ours would’ve taken a vastly long time to evolve, but in actuality the majority of it happened within 50 million years, which is a relatively short time as far as evolution is concerned. I realized this meant I had to render different time periods and animals than I initially thought.

Sketches

In my research, there were points within the evolution of the eye that I wanted to represent, so I started by sketching the creatures that were mentioned in the articles that I read and some of the diagrams that I found. Drawing them out next to each other helped me visualized how I wanted to lay out the infographic.

Digital Drafts

I wanted the infographic to be a fairly linear design that branched out along the stalk of the eye. I also wanted it to be reminiscent of the recognizable evolutionary tree as that is the central theme I was covering. The major problem I had with this was including the timeline in an orderly, visually pleasing way.

Final Draft

The final poster incorporated all the simple sketch-to-digital drawings that went along with the facts I complied from the various papers and articles. This poster is both informative and visually interesting, conveying the information well while drawing the eye down along the eye stalk. Along with the poster, I also made a series of instagram posts that lay out some of the facts in a different form for a more comprehensive design.