To Live and Let Dieagram

Every which way but approved concept.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, "Agency work is fickle."

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. It may be fickle, but it's always fun!


Circling the conceptional wagons.

A lot of agency work is exploritory. The project may never see the light of day in a real world use, but the agency in charge is exploring all graphic possibilities of what could be done.

I was hired to explore different ways a diagram graphic (think pie chart etc.) could be carried out to make it more interesting, be flexible enough so it had animation attributes, and reflect a more feminine target audience.

This post contains some of the ideas I created for this project.


Steps to no where concept.

I was provided with some very rough general directions and also asked to go beyond them as well and share what I think could work as well. Many of the ideas in this post I see animated in my mind. I was only providing static images but I think it was important to think through how they'd build out in motion as I created them as well.


This idea blossom was sprayed with creative Roundup.

Some of the ideas were pretty straight forward and probably not too practical. It's a balance of trying to be unique, but still retaining an element of graphic pragmatism. After all, there is a reason why the pie chart is used so much, it works well for it's purpose.


My personal favorite: Globulous Nodes.

How can you not like this when it's named "Globulous Nodes?" I'd animate this so when you moused over the fat ends of the nodes they would increase in size and everything else would scale back as the information populated the node end.

I've already recycled this motif into a new pattern for a bonus edition pattern set I'm creating.


A concept inspired by game show graphics.

Just search Google images for "The Dating Game" and you'll get an idea of my source of inspiration for this design.


Technicolor Rams horn concept.

The term "Technicolor" is one of those words that take a reality of life "Color" and turn it into a brand name. As far as I know reality has always been in color.


Rams horn extruded.

Follow the multi-colored brick road but watch your step, you may fall off into the alpha channel netherworld.


Animation centric concept.

Slowly spinning, transparent, pulsing, and when moused over scales up and text slides in.


Revised direction "Flat."

After taking in all my ideas the agency requests another specific direction playing off several of my ideas. Kind of like if Pantone created mag wheels I guess.


Revised direction "3D."

With the help of Google SketchUp I created this 3D version.


New Revised direction "Flat Perspective."

The agency asked me to work some of the other colors back into this new version and I also played with the perspective so it wasn't so flat as well. They also requested a version that took this same motif and extruded it into 3D. Oh yeah, they asked that I include a heart in the diagram too. (No I didn't ask why)


New Revised direction "3D" with spacing.

With all the colors and 3D applied I felt it was getting too busy. The more I looked at it the more it felt like a Fisher-Price™ version of Stonehenge.


New Revised direction "3D" without spacing.

I rendered out the detail a little more and removed the spacing which I felt added too much visual tension.

When it was all said and done the project was killed leaving me with a stink load of "Dieagrams."