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Elisa Ngo

19 March 2023

Lopatko

WRIT 2

From Article to Infographic: A Reflection

Depression and anxiety are the most common mental illnesses in the world with

approximately 280 million people suffering from depression and 301 million people suffering

from an anxiety disorder. It came to a surprise to me when I found out that there are some other

ways to treat some mental illnesses like anxiety and depression besides psychotherapy and

prescribed medication. That is, the possible treatment of anxiety through vitamin D supplements

if a person has vitamin D deficiency and anxiety disorder symptoms. I translated the research

article, “Vitamin D supplementation improves anxiety but not depression symptoms in patients

with vitamin D deficiency,” into an infographic that is intended to be found online on medical

and health-related websites or web-pages about vitamin D deficiency for individuals who have or

thinking they have vitamin D deficiency with an anxiety disorder, or even people who just have

anxiety. Online accessibility allows anyone to be able to view the infographic, and even printing

the infographic will be useful for doctors’ offices. An infographic format will focus on the key

information from the scholarly article by presenting the content in an organized and simple

manner, in which any person could be able to understand. I created an infographic to be able to

convey the relationship between vitamin D and mental illnesses in order for others, especially

patients with vitamin D deficiency, to become aware of the benefits of taking vitamin D

supplements and the treatment of anxiety symptoms.

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Before constructing the genre translation, I had to learn some techniques to strategically

read the scholarly paper. Reading its particular sections, including the abstract, introduction,

methods, and conclusion or discussion, first helped me determine the main argument. Rosenberg

advises, “Once you have the main argument you can make wise decisions about which parts of

the text you need to pore over and which you can blithely skim.” (219). This technique guided

me towards which parts of the article I should read and focus on more when I had to constantly

recall the new audience of average individuals who have vitamin D deficiency and anxiety. I

focused on the details of the introduction, procedure, results, and conclusions of the experiment

because this information provided a sufficient summary of the research that was done. Also, I

decided to read less into the specific details of the data, graphs, and analysis of the experiment

since it will not be useful to the new audience of the general public who will not likely

understand or be interested in the numbers. The information that I decided to leave out were

some of the data results of two of the four scale tests, the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale and

the Revised Physical Anhedonia Scale. These tests were not necessary to add into the

infographic since they did not affect the measurements of depression and anxiety symptoms

before and after the control and experimental groups results, as they measured depression in

social withdrawal and physical symptoms. For this infographic, I included the Hamilton

Depression Scale-17 and Hamilton Anxiety Scale-17 since these tests provided the

measurements of anxiety and depression in the patients. Once I identified the major points I

wanted to include in the infographic, I needed to know how I could reflect that information for

the appropriate audience.

I had to summarize the key points of the experiment that were essential for a new

audience of the general public to understand. At first, it was difficult to read the contents of the
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article since it contained complicated scientific terminology that were originally meant for other

academics in the field. I had to recall that when analyzing the article, “...[I] must understand the

context and then [I] must carefully study the ways that the discourse does and does not respond

appropriately to that context.” (Carroll 56). The authors of the article made written choices to use

this formal language as it was appropriate for their intended audience. In the context of the

infographic, however, the new audience helped me realize that the formality of the subject

should be modified in simple terms, but not completely in an informal manner. The information

that I decided to change and include into the infographic were the complex terms from the

article. For instance, I needed to explain the hormones: norepinephrine and dopamine, since the

average person may or may not understand these scientific terms. Additionally, I had to dig

deeper into research on the role and effects of vitamin D, and vitamin D deficiency on the body.

Giving basic contextual information on mental illnesses and vitamin D will help introduce the

subject and the contents of the experiment smoothly.

A challenge I had when constructing the infographic was choosing what information I

wanted to include since I had the impulse to be as detailed as possible. Due to translating genres,

“...you will have to consider not only form but also audience, purpose, and genre; you will, in

other words, have to consider the rhetorical effectiveness of your writing.” (Dirk 260). As I was

writing down the potential information I should include in the infographic, I remembered to only

keep the information that is relevant to understand the relief of anxiety symptoms in people who

are vitamin D deficient due to vitamin D supplementation. This allowed me to gather some of the

details of the procedure of the experiment and the results of the experiment on the control group

compared to the intervention, or experimental, group after the six months process. Translating
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and choosing the information from the article to an infographic also influences the design of the

new genre.

The layout and design changed from the article to the infographic. The article contained

large amounts of information in paragraphs with graphical and statistical data while the

infographic was strategically organized with sections of minimal amounts of text and visual

representations that were all designed to be in a pleasing color theme. For the infographic, I

decided to keep the color palette simple with blue, orange, white, and black colors, and a few

simple icons that did not block the areas that contained written text. I chose these colors because

I associated mental illnesses with the color blue, which can symbolize sadness and relate to

depression or anxiety symptoms, and vitamin D with the color orange, since vitamin D can be

obtained by sunlight. In color theory, orange and blue are complementary colors, so I thought

that this palette would be aesthetically pleasing to look at. Keeping the headings in large font will

help the reader identify the topic for that section of the infographic and bolding certain words in

each section will highlight the most important information for the reader to remember. The

format of an infographic helps attract the new audience to easily read and comprehend the

information about the possible treatment of vitamin D deficiency as opposed to reading the

original wordy article that is too complex to understand.

The beginning process of designing the infographic was a challenge that I was confronted

with because producing an infographic or visual piece of medium has endless creative

possibilities. I had to research some examples of infographics to be able to know what a good

infographic looks like. This includes looking over medical and health-related infographics, such

as ones for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Anxiety and Depression

Association of America, and on Pinterest. From looking at these references, I learned that
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keeping the format as simple as possible is the best by having a consistent and not overwhelming

color palette, titled sections, simple and straightforward information in each section, and using an

appropriate amount of icons or visual representations in order to not overcrowd the infographic.

This is illustrated in my infographic through the minimal color palette of blue, orange, white and

black, sections divided by clear titles and simple text, and having a few relevant icons that

represent the information being told. These choices keep the whole infographic pleasant to look

at for the reader to be interested in.

Articles and infographics have their own respective rhetorics, language, and design

formats that are appropriate for their intended audiences. Translating between these two genres

has changed my way of thinking and approach a certain format in order to reach a certain group

of people and communicate certain kinds of information that are relevant and appropriate. As for

the infographic, the process of leaving out information, including new information, and defining

difficult terms was necessary to convey the information from the scientific article in order for the

average person to understand. This process of learning how to read a lengthy research article to

find its main points will be a useful tool for future science-related courses. Being able to translate

information from a complex source in a way for anyone to understand will be another useful

tool, not only in the sense of literature or writing courses, but even just explaining information

verbally to an average person. This project made me realize the importance of keeping the

audience in mind when relaying and writing information.

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Works Cited

Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps towards Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing

Spaces: Readings on Writing, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, vol. 1,

Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 45-58.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, edited by Charles Lowe

and Pavel Zemliansky, vol. 1, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249-262.

Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.” Writing Spaces:

Readings on Writing, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, vol. 2, Parlor Press,

2011, pp. 210-220.

Zhu, Cuizhen, et al. “Vitamin D supplementation improves anxiety but not depression symptoms

in patients with vitamin D deficiency.” Brain & Behavior, vol. 10, no. 11, 2020.