My role

Data analysis
Usability testing
Data visualisation

Tools

Figma
Excel
Procreate

Timeline

4 weeks
Jan - Feb 2022

Type

Solo work
Student assignment

I was asked to create a clear, cohesive, and well communicated infographic. I chose to depict the population size and ancestries of cities on the fictional continent Wildemount.

The challenge

I was given the assignment to create an infographic on a topic of my choice. I decided to focus on mapping within Dungeons & Dragons (DnD). In the campaign setting guide Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the world information is spread across a 150-page gazetteer and organized by location. This makes it hard to compare cities and get a sense of the continent as a whole. I decided to bring together the data about city populations and their ancestries, so that DnD players familiar with Wildemount could get a better understanding of how cities vary across the continent.

my Solution

Emulate the colours and styles of the source book.
Visualise the continent and major factions using colour.
Represent cities as absolute locations and use area to show total population size.
Show the proportions of each ancestry in each city using pie charts.
Backup information represented visually with textual and numeric data points for more concrete reference.

final prototype

Download the PDF

Key features

Emulate the colours and styles of the source book.

The audience of this poster is people who’ve read the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, so I kept the same typeface and key colours to help users connect this map to information they already knew from the book.

Visualise the continent and major factions using colour.

While the original map of Wildemount includes mountain ranges, beaches, rivers, and forests, I simplified my map to simply coastline and faction locations. I did this to remove any visual clutter that might distract from the purpose of the poster; to convey information about the people.

Represent cities as absolute locations and use area to show total population size.

I used dots in order to give viewers a precise location for each city, regardless of its population. At the same time, I used area to represent population on the map in order for viewers to see how the population is spread across the continent.

Show the proportions of each ancestry in each city using pie charts.

Pie charts allow for quick comparison of groups. By using pie charts, rather than bar charts or percentages, I was able to give viewers a sense of the relative sizes of each ancestry in a particular location. While other ancestries may also be present, the chart design shows viewers the largest groups at a glance.

Backup information represented visually with textual and numeric data points for more concrete reference.

While the pie charts and city circles give viewers a general sense of size and makeup, providing a population number helps solidify the information. Two cities across the map may also be hard to compare using only size, so viewers can turn to the population number if they’re ever confused.

Lessons learned

The more colours, the harder it is to create both cohesion and contrast.

My final design had 17 colours that needed to be easily distinguishable, while still work together to create an aesthetically pleasing poster. I learned very quickly that this number is unwieldy. It was especially difficult to find 11 colours in that palette that could be easily recognisable when comparing the legend to a pie chart.

In order to mitigate contrast issues, I included an outline around each segment of each pie chart. While not easily noticeable from a distance, it helps to differentiate segments that might otherwise blur together.

Include more shades of blue in order to mitigate issues for colourblind users.

After this project concluded, I posted my final design online to a forum for people similar to my intended user. One piece of feedback I received was that the colours were not easily decipherable for a colourblind person. They specifically mentioned including more shades of blue, as those are more identifiable for people with red-green colourblindness, the most common form of colourblindness.

The Population Makeup of Cities in Wildemount