Hi there,

 Welcome back.

 For the past two weeks, I had been busy working on an infographic that was meant to raise awareness on a societal issue that plagued many developing ASEAN countries. This topic chosen was none other than Child Pornography. It has been a serious problem in The Philippines so I decided to focus on Child Pornography in the Philippines. Global organizations like UNICEF have been trying to solve this issue in cooperation with local authorities because the country has been cited as the world's top global source of child pornography, jeopardizing the lives and future of many Filippino kids. 

 The intention of this infographic is to educate the general public about the sexual exploitation situations that the children in the Philippines are facing. The information would include how these exploitations are facilitated, the cities that are common predatory grounds, parties that are involved and the root cause of the issue. I also wanted to draw the audiences' attention to the legal remedies that have been put in place by organizations and local police over the years but the reasons why some of these efforts are ineffective. Hence, I was keen in doing a combination of both informational and timeline infographic.

 Hence, this is my preliminary sketch: 


For this preliminary sketch, I decided to use PowerPoint to lay out some of my elements such as the 2D and isometric icons to see if they are appropriate in illustrating some of my points. My initial thought was really to keep it simple and create a more conventional flow of information that is easy to follow and understand. Hence, I decided to create the title at the top right with a sub-title that reads "Global epicenter of live-streamed child porn". I was also keen to add some statistics to draw more attention to the severity of the issue.  Instead of spelling out the numbers in words, I decided to use visuals. On the left, although it is not very clearly laid out, it was a depiction of the Philippines' map and it was in grey-scale because I wanted it to create a gloomy mood. Layering over the map are isometric-style icons of children, money and 'human trafficker'. Keeping it simple, I dedicated a column (on the left) to place all the basic information in. Then, on the right, a timeline of when the legal remedies were rolled out was curated with the pros and cons being highlighted by the green and red colored boxes as seen in the infographic. Lastly, I lined the reasons for the ineffectiveness of the legal remedies at the bottom of the infographics. At the start, the main color scheme that I was hoping to use was a mix of black, grey and white because I feel that this topic itself is a rather depressing and dark topic and the above-mentioned colors are suitable for creating this mood in audiences. However, the feedback that I received from family and friends was that it seemed too dull for liking which prompted me to change them to dark blue and amber. I also experimented with the use of different typographies which included both Avenir and Britannic.  To be honest, I was not very confident with this first sketch because I felt that something was off but I wasn't very sure.

 However, thanks to the critique session, I received valuable comments and suggestions from the class and Prof Kai En that I really wanted to explore in my second attempt. Here are some of the feedback mentioned:
  • The use of different typographies makes the infographic slightly confusing and complicated - best to reduce the number of fonts and standardize them
  • Colour scheme does not appear to bring out the appropriate mood for this topic. 
  • No anchor point and overall looks messy
  • Perhaps, the map can be expanded to show the different locations that child pornography takes place more rampantly
  • Add in a section to advise how people can help 

After the critique session, I decided to change the entire look and feel of my infographic. Instead of sticking to the conventional flow, I wanted to create a visual in the center of my infographic as an anchor point where my audiences can start from. This visual will help to create a relevant context for the varying information to be appropriately displayed. Here is my second draft: 


With the use of illustrator, I used the pen tool, curvature tool and paintbrush tool to draw and trace out some of the visual graphics such as the sinister man in a mask (human trafficker) and the victim (girl) that appeared on the screen. I wanted to portray the context of an online child sexual abuse through the use of these graphics which can help audiences to better visualize the information in each of the sections like "who are the recruiters" so on and so forth. Overall, I also standardized the font to be Avenir to reduce confusion. Keeping in mind that the color scheme is used to define and evoke feelings, I picked black as the color to instill fear among the audiences with this taboo topic and also went ahead with the choice of red to draw attention and highlight the dangers of this issue. I also thought that the contrast was strong enough to elicit a sense of power and evil. This is because we often associate villain protagonists with a red and black color scheme which serves as a visual reminder that these people, no matter how much we are supposed to identify with them, are not "good guys". Other than that, I also tried to create some form of repetition with hand silhouette in both red and black to create some form of rhythm in the middle section and to draw attention to the horrific statistics that could not only put people in shock but also to reflect deeper about this issue. I wanted to isolate one of the children on the left (the boy) with his red t-shirt to emphasize the fact that boys are more at risk of experiencing sexual violence than girls.

In the second half of the infographics, I chose green to evoke a sense of potential growth, a glimpse of hope and the possible restoration of the children's bright future with the legal remedies and non-profit organizations' help. I also used the concept of a rope to explain the legal remedies in their timeline. Here, I wanted to show how the police or NPG has been trying to rescue these children (victims) by providing legal remedies (represented by the rope) but the efforts are being hindered because of the interference of the human traffickers along the way. Here are the layers I used to create the second draft:




After receiving a few more comments from the class in our second online critique session. Here's my final product:


For my final infographic, I attempted to make it simpler and neater by aligning the text in their own columns and standardized the colours that I want to predominantly use for this. I chose Cerulean as the background colour for the top half and then use black and white to emphasize on my key graphics. I also changed the font colors to white so that the contrast would allow the words to be more readable. I removed some graphics as they seemed to make it too complicated and messy. I also changed the color for the bottom half because I think yellow would be a more suitable colour to symbolize hope, energy, and positivity on the point of legal remedies. Heeding Li Jie's advice, the rope has been removed and replaced by the two hands which indicate the notion of helping, but the victim's hand was being grabbed by the evil perpetrator which "hindered the efforts". Here, I was trying to make sure that my graphic helps to explain the point I was making. Lastly, I wanted to narrow it down to 3 ways in which the public can help so they are left in the white space which is used to demarcate a different section.

Here are the layers and colour palette I used: 






I did not use a lot of layers as I was editing most of the graphics on the main document. I found it easier to do so especially when I locked the selective artworks which allowed me to work on top of this locked layer as well. However, when I need to draw or trace some objects of icons from a picture, I would definitely use the layers. During the process, I also learned how to use a clipping mask to crop my graphics into various shapes. although I still had to use photoshop a few times to remove the background of some elements. It was a pity that I did not have much time to explore indesign but I do believe I will be able to do so in the next group assignment!

I hope you like this piece of infographic & learned something about child pornography in the Philippines.

Cheers!

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End.