The experience gained during the work on my creative project has allowed me to learn a variety of new skills and information. I have chosen to create an infographic about the development of money and other concepts related to it, such as banking. As a result, I have acknowledged the advantages of visual content for presenting a message, basic design skills for creating infographics for a specific audience, and, indeed, the money history.
Before all, I learned that the visual format might be more appropriate compared to the essay for some purposes. Namely, when using a visual representation of information, one can attract the attention of the viewer with bright colors or interesting shapes to focus on specific important details. In contrast, information is presented monotonously and unified in the essay format, making it possible to single out particular paragraphs exclusively with headings or bullet points. Visual content communicates ideas, rather than their essence, more effectively. An essay can present an infinite number of necessary details, while visual information must be accurate and concise. Thus, visual content can convey the basic points of a concept to create a general idea by attracting more viewers’ attention and taking less time to grasp it.
The process of designing the infographic has been the most creative among the other activities involved in the work on the project. As such, I have put much thought into the infographic’s choice of elements; for example, a helen color was chosen as it resembles the color of dollar bills. Yellow accents were also made to refer to the color of gold. The layout was chosen to show the timeline of the development of traditional money, as well as the evolution of electronic and digital types. The most difficult choice was which textual information to include in the infographic since its volume should be minimal.
Moreover, the design of my creative project has been done for a specific audience. I considered my peers to be the core viewers of infographics. According to Gautam (2020), visual learning benefits the students’ education due to its simplistic form and attention-grabbing attributes. Hence, people not familiar with the history of the world’s development of money and currencies may be interested in this information to understand the historical process. As a result, the infographic has been developed with the idea that it is necessary to present the maximum of exciting information in a compressed format.
Finally, creating infographics allowed me to consider alternative opinions about the evolution of money. As can be seen from the development of money in the world, they gradually changed their form and passed into other states. Thus, I learned that traditional money did not always look like we used to see it, so their disappearance and a complete transition to digital options is quite possible in the future. As part of the creative process, I wanted to connect all the elements with a shared idea so that the information presented could be easily perceived. In this way, different elements are repeated throughout the infographic, which helps in creating consistency.
To conclude, the creative project has been an exciting experience with multiple learning opportunities, which I tried to use. Consequently, I have become aware of the purposes of visual representation of information, as well as the process of adapting the format and content of my message for a specific audience. Moreover, I have gained fundamental design skills and deepened my knowledge of the history of money evolution.
Reference
Gautam, H. (2020). The benefits of visual content in higher education. Magic Box.