Working with the brilliant Melbourne-based visualization studio Flink Labs, I designed posters for display in all hospitals across Victoria, Australia's second-most populous state. Flink built a programmatic back-end that feeds data into the poster design at regular intervals, so hospital staff can print up-to-date versions showing the performance of their unit relative to various comparative metrics.
The poster above is the design chosen by the client in the end, while the graphics below showcase some of the other directions I was pursuing. The half-circle gauges in the final poster were modeled after digital counterparts that had already been implemented before I was brought in. From my perspective, while I think they function quite well here, there is reason to seriously ponder the incongruity of having a half circle ever representing more than 50%. The full circle gauges among the explorations below solve this, while also packing more information into a single graphic.
An argument against the full circles, at least as executed here, is that the extra layers of information embedded in the additional color bars may prove difficult to read for some people who are not used to interpreting infographics — a vital concern to consider given the general audience found in state hospitals.
In the end, these posters are examples of exceedingly simple and straight-forward information design, without bells and whistles — just produced with clarity and precision in mind, as well as an eye toward practical concerns in the field: These are printed at regular intervals on dozens (hundreds?) of different hospital printers, with variable quality and color fidelity. I ran tests to make sure the contrast in the final design was sufficient to be readable under less-than-ideal circumstances.
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Explore other projects on the EDLUNDART design page.