Valentina D’Efilippo

Valentina D’Efilippo

I chose to highlight the piece Trending Seeds infographic by Valentina D’Efilippo, a piece created as a part of the #MeToo movement. This piece is strong because of its profound complexity in both content and visuals, yet it reads so clearly as a dandelion puff. This piece has created a lot of thought for me, as you have so much interactivity in the piece, mainly in the near-endless exploration of tweets documented in the puff. Her description that reads, “While media outlets generated significant awareness on Twitter regarding the issue, the hashtag #MeToo has allowed both celebrities and regular people to share their personal feelings and experiences – using social media as a platform for open discussion” is what creates the most insight for me. It describes the overall idea of the infographic, while leaving openness for personal research and exploration.

There are many formal choices that aid in the success of this piece. Primarily with the choices made in the key / defining choices in creating the flower. The size of each puff is the number of followers the tweet author had, the color is the number of likes, the pattern is the number of comments, and the line distance is the number of retweets. Another successful decision is to have the flower ‘generate’ when you load the page, from oldest to newest tweet. Not only does this represent the gigantic amount of tweets and discussions made in this movement, but it also draws your eye to the graphic and creates strong visual interest. It encourages exploration. After looking at many of her infographics, the Trending Seeds project has moved to be one of my favorites.

Fedrica Fragapane

I chose Fedrica Fragapane mainly because of the complexity of her designs. I was looking through many information designers, and her work was so striking and complex, frequently representing information in spirals or in reference to natural phenomenons. She is an independent data visualization designer who has worked at Google, BBC, Penguin Books, and many other companies. I find that she is related to D’Efilippo because she uses natural shapes to represent information. Like how D’Efilippo used a dandelion to represent information, Fragapane uses nautilus shells, branches, and leaves. I find her work very inspiring, and enjoyed researching her works.