Memorandum

To:
From:
Date:
Subject:

Professor Karen Thomson

Kevin Woodruff
March 12, 2015
Project 3 Data Visualization

This memo is in response to your request for audience and purpose, statistical data choices, tool choice
and limits as it relates to the attached infographic. This memo also includes justification of design for the
typography, color, layout, Gestalt design etc.
This infographic is on the subject of remarriage. It does not condone remarriage or chastise it; rather it
tells a story about how it exists today in the United States and how it is becoming more prevalent in
society.
Audience
The intended audience to this infographic is anyone over the age of 15 years. This is the age where the
lowest age bracket for marriage was considered. This is intended for the general public and does not
require any certain level of education to interoperate, nor does the audience need to be married. This
Infographic would most likely be found on the internet.
The stakeholders for this infographic would be anyone who has a strong stance on marriage. This would
be mainly religious factions and political groups who would want to influence the general public into their
particular way of thinking. It could be used for the promotion of the traditional marriage lifestyle
meaning that people are to be married and only once. It could also be used in a way to promote a new age
thinking on marriage as in it might take more one shot to get it right, and thats okay if people are
remarrying more now. It really depends on what other media it is presented along with, justifying one
way or the other.
Statistical Data Choices
For my graphic, I got all of my data from the US Census Bureau. The report, published this month, was
titled Remarriage in the United States which is an analysis of data from 2008 to 2012. The study only
analyzed people in the United States and references older datasets. This data is accurate because the
people who surveyed did not have any motivation to skew the results, as it was done with public funding,
for public knowledge. This was part of the American Community Survey Data, collected to give
communities information for planning and predicting the needs of the community. The US Census
Bureaus primary job is to gather useful, unbiased information for public use. The participants had no
incentive for not being honest with responses as well, as they were randomly selected households asked to
participate in a survey.
Justification of Design
This infographic uses many design elements in order to tell the story. It isnt completely unbiased, it does
skew a little bit towards the people should try to marry once this was done very subtly by use of colors.
The majority of the design was chosen in order to be neutral on the subject.

Typography
This infographic contains a decent amount of text, so it is organized and displayed in a manner in
order to draw the eye to the main parts first. Firstly, there is the title, REMARRIAGE this is
centered at the top of the page, where people tend to first look. It is also the largest and most bold
text on the page. The font color is brightly visible against the background. The second title,
Currently is in the same font as the first title, but the text is not as large, and it doesnt stick out
as much from its background, letting it be the second thing the eyes look at. The titles are the only
main text thats of a different color and it centered. All of the other words are in greyscale. All of
the type is in a sanserif style so that it is easy on the eyes. Its not aggressive and out there. Its
much more inviting than say Times New Roman. This is part of the neutrality stance on
remarriage. Its not aggressive towards the idea.
Color
I tried to mainly use cool colors along with greyscales in this infographic. These colors reflect
rapture, a sense of calm and relaxation, along with being reserved. I picked this because being
reserved is associated with neutrality, and that is what I was striving for. The one that wasnt all
that neutral was using the bright red ring, being love and passion with the contrasting all black
ring. The color black can be seen as analogous to evil and misery. I contrasted these on either side
of the title, which the reader sees with the title, giving the impression that one is good and one is
bad. This gives the impression to the reader that there is a choice to be made. In the graphic
showing that people in the city are more likely to remarry, I chose to associate the black ring with
those that remarry more frequently. Those were the only two intentional influences I added to the
graphic. I did use a lot of blue, but it was light, so it gave off more of a sense of calmness and
responsibility rather than sadness. These colors are mainly geared to people in the United States,
as these colors have different associations around the world.
Layout
The layout of this graphic is two main parts. The top part is much bigger than the lower part, and
there are contrasting colors. The blue top part can be seen as dominating, but the warm and soft
color of the bottom in the background gives the lower part something to stand on. The bottom
part is really only there to provide additional information and break up the monotony of blue that
is to top part. The top part has two columns, but the information is assigned semi-randomly. I
really just played around with it until it looked good. Information was generally evenly spaced
out in the graphic, utilizing the whole picture and giving a sense of a grid
Gestalt Design
Similarity/Anomaly
There was a main theme of circles in my graphic; circles and rings. This was done because rings
are analogous with relationships and marriage. Even the graph I incorporated was in the shape of
a ring. The anomalies in this infographic would probably be the colors. It is just random enough
to break up the graphic and essentially give your eyes a break from seeing the same thing. It goes
well in the graphic

Proximity and Alignment

I organized my infographic so that there wasnt any actual information in the exact center. This
turned into two main columns of information on the top part which lets the reader take a path
and work their way around the graphic. This makes it fun and gives a choice to the reader.
Depth
The main depth in this graphic would be the picture of the United States with words over it. It
gives the graphic a multilevel feel. It gives the sense that you can actually look into the graphic
instead of just looking at basic shapes. Its more visually appealing and more inviting to the
reader.
Choice of Tool
I used the free online tool Piktochart to create my infographic. It was very intuitive and had templates. I
started out attempting to use Microsoft Publisher, but I gave up after a few hours with only a text box to
show for it. I would use Pictochart again, but I did feel slightly limited by the options and available
graphics in the free version.
Limits
The infographic did not turn out exactly as planned, as there were limited things I could do with the
program I was using. The sporadic use of some color, including the bright orange, was unintentional as
there were some things I couldnt change the color on. They worked, but I would like to just fine tune it a
little more. Also, I cant find how to get rid of the Piktorchart advertisement on the bottom of my
graphic. The main thing that I am unhappy with is the lack of artistic flair. I consider myself artistically
challenged and what I created maxes out my abilities, even though I think it could look better if someone
more artistic got ahold of it.