Some more research and inspiration for my PAC. Top: Photo collage by Matthew Craven, Middle left: An image from ‘Flora’ by Nick Knight, Middle right: Photo collage by Francisca Pageo, Bottom: Photo collage by Eva Eun-Sil Han. 

As part of my PAC project I’m designing some information graphics to go with a map of some of the endangered plants at Kew.

Ladislav Sutnar was a modernist from Czechoslovakia and was considered to be one of the great pioneers of information design. Sutnar was known for designing in spreads rather than single pages and used parentheses, brackets, small images and icons to reinforce hierarchical structures of content. He also placed heavy emphasis on typography and used a limited colour palette. This helped readers to rapidly scan the page so that they could find information easily and quickly. Sutnar is also credited with placing parentheses around telephone numbers in America - this visually compartmentalised the information for the reader, and is now used all over the world to help people remember sets of numbers like phone numbers. 

The image on the bottom right is an infographic I’m working on. Over the past 10 years 130 million hectares of forest have been destroyed, equivalent to the size of 10 Englands. I like the simplicity of these but I might try a few variations with text and maybe some imagery based on Sutnar’s work, for the final graphic.

A few experiments with some squares on a grid. I’m planning on screen printing these over the top of the photo collage to make my print. I’m just unsure whether they are really adding anything to the composition or not. I guess I’ll have to see how the screen print turns out. The original collage without any treatment is in the first picture. On screen the original definitely looks better. 

Some of my primary research for the PAC project. I went Kew Gardens last Sunday and took the top four snaps there. I’m still struggling to nail down a solid focus, but I have a general area that I think I’m definitely sticking to - plants and raising awareness around plant biodiversity.

Originally I wanted to create some visual communication for Kew, in particular the Millenium Seed Bank that collects and stores seeds from all over the world. There are over six billion seeds there, some from plants that don’t even exist in the wild anymore, so it’s a really important project. They run an ‘adopt a seed’ initiative there to try to raise funds, which I thought could be an interesting angle that could give more focus to my project. Could I make something that educates people about plant biodiversity and the seed bank, with the outcome being getting more people to adopt a seed? 

I saw it being a set of prints and a small infographic book on diversity and why it might be cool to adopt a plant, apart from the obvious reason of saving a species from becoming extinct. It would be aimed at people living in urban cities like London, who are particularly unaware of issues like deforestation that don’t effect them directly but that could have huge effects on the world in the future.

At the moment I’m experimenting with photo collage and patterns for the visual side of this project. The bottom left image is a poster by Mary Kessell (1964) in a style that I really like. She uses illustration and photographic collage in a style that could be a really good way to visually represent ‘diversity’ in my pieces. It’s one of many posters commissioned by TFL when the Metropolitan and District lines first opened as a way of getting people to use the tube to visit Kew.   

The bottom right image is an ink impression of the growth lines of a tree. I think I’d like to explore abstract plant patterns like this in more detail.

Beautiful short film exploring the Millenium Seed Bank at Kew. Photomicroscopic imagery by Rob Kesseler.

The amazing ‘Secret Life of Plants’ documentary from 1979, with a soundtrack by Stevie Wonder (!). I’ve sort of changed my PAC idea a little bit. Again. :( Now I’m thinking of doing an information design project comparing the similarities of trees and plants to people, with the end goal of encouraging people to donate to a conservation group like Green Peace or the Woodland Trust. At the moment I’m thinking that the outcome will be a small booklet or a poster, with some postcards and possibly an online website. 

Interesting video of Tony Brook giving a tour of his personal Wim Crouwel poster collection.