Critic #1: Isabelle
Emulation feedback: I like your second display! I think with your color model, it's a little difficult to try to find different colors to use and you did a nice job emulating the model. What I would suggest doing is play around with different color combinations. Currently, it looks like the display is trying to show some sort of progression, but I don't think that's what you're trying to do. You can try to break it down to using two colors like your first display and then alternate the colors for each island to show the correlation. You can also try adding the diagonal lines onto the islands to make them different, like your visual language model does.
I opted to use an alternating color scheme to hopefully alleviate the misconception that it is trying to show some progression while still utilizing my color model. Using the diagonal line pattern produced awkward results, and the map in my visual language model doesn't use a line pattern for its regions, so this probably makes more sense.
revisions:
Critic #2: Brooks Lobe
Emulation feedback: He liked the colors used to match corresponding island pairs, and also liked how the islands were labeled in the second version. He noticed that the box with text is the same color as the background, which makes it "blend in" strangely, whereas in the visual language model, the box with text does not match the background, so it stands out more.
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Not all of the islands match up exactly (e.g. the second Alola island matches up with a group of four Hawaiian islands), so it is not clear to non-Pokemon fans how some islands correspond. I could potentially separate them into different columns to make the corresponding islands more clear.
I changed the text box to light blue, the main color, just as how my visual language model uses crimson. This will hopefully stand out more, and not blend into the background. I did the same for the labels. It is fairly bright though, so I will gather feedback next time on how readable it is.
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Hopefully, the alternating color scheme as Isabelle suggested alleviates the unclarity of which islands are corresponding. Using columns to separate them out would make it clear as well, but I'd rather they be more geographically accurate.
revisions:
Critic #3: Sanjana Galgalikar
Emulation feedback: This emulates your visual model really well with having the map
elements placed on a diagonal line background and with the map labels. With the monochromatic color scheme one I felt like it was showing a progression in time, when it isnt...so maybe you can use brighter colors if you're still doing that. You can also separate both maps to show that they are not in the same geographical space, but two map elements being compared to each other.
Like with Isabelle's advice, I removed the gradient effect so it doesn't seem like it's trying to show a progression. My visual language model doesn't use gradients to show progression, so that wouldn't make sense here.
I also separated the islands into separate black boxes to make clear that they aren't in the same geographic space.
revisions:
Critic #1: Bryce Kolton
Emulation feedback: Good job. Try to use the same color for both the Alolan region and Hawaii, since it seems like something is trying to be emphasized with the blue regions when they aren't. Also be noteful that when exporting to png, it looks like a border surrounds your blue artifacts. Nice work putting part of the alolan region over the descriptor like in your visual language model. It would be really cool if you could do all the regions, but I understand that's a lot of time and you're focusing mostly on the latest one.
I used the same color for the map for both regions. To better emulate my color model, I used white, since my color model also uses white for its map. This should prevent any island from looking like it is emphasized. Since the focus is only on the newest games, covering the other regions would be redundant and clutter the infographic.
revisions:
Critic #2: Bichen Xu
Emulation feedback: I like your color and the background pattern which emulating your color and visual model very well. The box at the top right is too big compare with the box in your visual model. The blue color on maps confused me since I thought the islands with blue color have some special meaning. Maybe you can try to use some very thin lines to connect two islands, which can help people to understand the information better.
Making the box smaller would make it more difficult to read the text, and it only seems a bit big, since the visual language model uses a bigger map. Because of where I will put it in my layout, it makes sense to leave it at this size, but I will gather more feedback to see what others think. Similar to Bryce's feedback, the islands have been made the same color. I used lines to connect islands instead, but since the use of lines is limited in my visual language model, I will see if my critics have any suggestions on how to better connect islands.
revisions:
Location Element & Critiques
Critic #3: Yilin
Emulation feedback: The diagonal line pattern was a good emulation of the map display, but she also thought that the light blue regions looked like they were trying to highlight something, so the gradient effect actually worked better for her even though it seemed like a progression. If I could make them all one consistent color and try to connect them some other way, it would probably be more clear without violating my color model or trying to misleadingly highlight something. The labels also seemed to not match the visual language model for her; I could try making the triangles higher to match, or using the flag labels from the visual language model instead.
The islands have been made the same color, similar to the other critics' advice. I opted not to revert to the gradient effect, as the feeling of having a progression would detract from the display. I changed the triangles on the labels to make them more matching to my visual language model; they are now much taller, and match the color of the background, as in the model.
revisions:
This display attempts to show where in Hawaii each island in the Alola region in Pokemon Sun and Moon takes its inspirations from.
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How this element exploits the visual potential of location: This display does not attempt to relate two locations that both appear in the real world. Rather, it takes each fictional location (island in Alola) and correlates it to a real-world location (island in Hawaii). The first version relies on each pair of islands being parallel on the page, and their similar appearances for the viewer to make the connection that they are corresponding. The second version tries to make this more clear using color to encode each pair of corresponding islands.
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How this element emulates the models: To emulate my color model, I used light blue as a means to highlight Alola in the first version, because that is the part of the topic I am focusing on (changes in the new games). In the second version, I try to use different shades of blue to encode different island pairs, like how the color model uses different shades of blue to encode iPad sales. These shades of blue don't seem entirely optimal for this purpose, though, due to its lower contrast with the background, so I hope to gather feedback on whether it is effective. The main background color is also taken from the color model, though a darker shade from the color model is used for the background of the boxed content to follow the visual language model.
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To emulate my visual language model, I used a darker shade of the background color in the location display to separate it from other content, as well as using the diagonal line pattern background. The maps have detailed outlines of their locations, but otherwise have no interior detail. Since color is not used for highlighting in the second version, I attempt to use the sharp labels from the visual language model to identify each island. The header line separates the darker boxed content from the rest of the page.
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To emulate my typography model, the same font is used, with identifying text being the same size as the caption text, and the header text being accordingly bigger.
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Sources/Credits:
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_world_in_relation_to_the_real_world
Alola region map: http://i.imgur.com/5b86sSl.jpg
Hawaii map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Map_of_Hawaii_highlighting_Hawaii_%28island%29.svg
