Infographic

For the 3 characteristics of effective informative delivery: The infographic is intellectually stimulating in the way it makes the reader decide what it is that they’re looking for in their composting solution. The flow chart style also makes it more personal and relevant to each person looking at it. The reader can get only the information that THEY need from it. This let’s each person focus on the essential parts to them. The infographic also shows creativity in it’s design. Not many infographics I found were flowcharts. It also uses simple language that’s fun and easy to follow.

Overall, I was very pleased with the entire infographic. It was so easy to read and the information it delivered was helpful. Composting can be an overwhelming concept especially getting started. This infographic takes out all the hard work of deciding how to get started and boils it down to just a few simple questions. The only thing that may have been even better is if somewhere near the bottom it had a description of what the different composting options were and how to do them. The colors, font, and drawings help make the infographic cute and unintimidating.

A lot of these concepts for composting I had not even considered or heard of. I really appreciated getting to see the variety of options out there. This widened my perspective to how there’s not really any excuse not to compost since it can be done in some form no matter the circumstances. There aren’t really any sources on the infographic and more seems to be the author’s thoughts on what would work best. I don’t know how helpful this would actually be for our class composting project. The university seems to already have in mind what way they want to compost, so I don’t think they’d need this infographic to help decide how they want to compost.

Infographic – Sarah Kate Brewer

CompostInfographic02

I chose this infographic because I think it is extremely educational in an eye-catching way! This infographic is designed in a creative way because it points out specific details about how compost is beneficial to the soil and watersheds by placing the facts in the different layers of soil. It is intellectually stimulating in the same way because as the audience reads each advantage to composting, they can see where the benefit might help specifically in the soil. For example, in the deeper layer of soil, the infographic tells us that composting can increase microbial activity. This would not happen at the surface of the soil, so the designer chose to place this fact where it was relevant – within the soil. This infographic is also relevant to the audience because not only are they learning what the benefits to composting are, they are learning more specifically where these chemical and physical changes are happening. The audience can know what to look for in their own garden with the information in this infographic!

My initial reaction to this infographic was that I was surprised. I like how this infographic ties together what we have been learning about all semester. We first began the semester by exploring the watersheds in Athens. Now that our next unit is about soil and composting, it is really fascinating to see how the two areas of biology go hand in hand! This was something I had not considered before. Though we have had many discussions in class about the two processes (watershed systems and composting systems), I kept them in separate categories in my head. I think the creator of this infographic was hoping to put the necessity for composting into perspective for his/her audience. Not only does composting increase the quality of the soil, but this effect can lead to sustainability with other aspects of the Earth, too! Because the soil is rich, it can hold more water and reduce stormwater runoff that pollutes our environments.

This infographic was made from the information provided by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance organization. As a class, it is important to use information that we not only find relevant, but accurate. We should be looking at credible materials that we can trust. For the infographics we make for UGA students, I believe we should look specifically at research that has been done about composting in Georgia specifically or in areas with a similar climate and quality of soil. Furthermore, I think this infographic leaves out one key aspect that we should include in our class infographics that we create. This infographic does not include a guide on how to get started with composting. It also does not give any information on the best way to compost or where to find this information should you want to start composting in your garden. I believe educating students about how to compost safely and effectively should be one of our main focuses when creating infographics. I look forward to what we will make together as a class! – Sarah Kate

Allaina Siler Composting Infographic

Regarding the three characteristics of effective informative delivery, the infographic is intellectually stimulating because it makes you think about what you can and cannot compost. It causes the viewer to contemplate what materials they have on the infographic at home, and whether or not they belong. As for being relevant to the audience, it would be perfect for the Rooker Hall demographic because the information is specifically tailored for people on campus in a dorm. And, I think it’s creative with its use of the neutral, mellow color scheme, as well as the cute illustrated items that either can or can’t be composted. Also, the three fonts work well together from a design standpoint and would be perfect and easy to read.

As for my gut emotional responses, I was immediately content because it is just so well illustrated and I love the mellow green background with the illustrations of food and other materials. It surprised me that newspaper is compostable because I thought the inks would have chemicals that might be harmful, but I guess not. Nothing angered or frustrated me because this infographic was carefully and thoughtfully made. And, the information didn’t deal with something upsetting like the news.

Before this infographic and this unit, although I barely knew anything about composting, I didn’t think that people would attempt to put plastic materials or processed food into compost piles. I suppose it makes sense with the plastic materials if the theoretical person confused recycling and composting, but I would never think to compost pizza just because I before assumed only fruits and vegetables could be composted. From the infographic, the creator was probably just hoping that the people on campus would gain a new perspective on what they could or couldn’t compost. To find this data, they used one source which is a Toronto informative website with information about what can and cannot be composted. We might engage in finding this data by just copying and pasting the information into a search bar, since they provided the source on the poster.

Although this compost infographic is very successful from a design and informative standpoint, I think maybe they could’ve considered a bit on why the demographic can’t compost certain things. However, it makes sense that they haven’t thought of including this in case there would be too much information that the viewer would not want to read and possibly walk away from the sight of too many words. We can definitely use this as an inspiration for our graphic with the layout of the work because the information is so clearly displayed. Not to mention, we can kind of copy the illustrations (still changing some aspects) for the images of the things that can and can’t be composted.