Carpy Design
This week , I've been asked to display an infographic that I like and talk about how it follows the CARP principles as mentioned in Robin Williams' The Non-Designer's Design book.
I am attracted to this infographic because I like coffee but I don't know too much about the different types of drinks there are and I'm anxious to learn more. This entire poster is styled in a mid-century modern vibe in almost every aspect. It could as easily have been created in 1958 as today. This is another reason I'm attracted to it. Lastly, I am extremely impressed at the amount of information that is compressed beautifully into this one graphic. It talks about types of coffee drinks, brewers, brew time, grinds and more. Here are the elements of CARP expressed in this infographic.
Contrast: The contrast in font size is extreme. The title "Coffee" screams out at you being at least 10 times larger than any other fonts on the page except for the word Chart which is still only about a fourth of the size of Coffee. There is no mistaking the levels of import on this chart just weighing font size. This title as well as some of the major headings are notable in that they are in a sans serif font and in all caps where the others are highly stylized and sentence case.
Alignment: There is heavy weight at the top of the page due to the gigantic title. To offset this and keep a page balance, the designer has first made the largest graphic elements to the right of the title to take care of left/right balance. Then the more numerous elements are lined up horizontally below which creates a heavier joint mass at the bottom sections of the page. This makes a top/bottom balance. To further create balance, all the graphics representing each category, for example the "production methods" all appear in the same horizontal plane and are of a similar size.
Repetition: Since this infographic is chock full of detail, it MUST use consistency throughout or it would appear chaotic and too busy. The color scheme is muted and uses brown tones, grays and a little touch of aqua. The lack of strong color contrast keeps it repetitive. The actual style of the entire page is consistent in its 1950's era feel with the color scheme, choice of fonts, types of drawings and even the old circuit board rounded off lines connecting all the elements. The coffee labels from the bags of coffee are repeated below as headers in some of the categories.
Proximity: The labels, sub-headers and categories are all extremely similar. To keep each section straight, there has to be proximity rules. In addition, the nearness and connections are emphasized by thin lines pointing to the headers and surrounding the content that goes with each header. These lines function as braces keeping things together. This aids the proximity since this is such a full poster. I'm surprised and impressed that this actually works.