Global Nuclear Power - Informational Poster

Global Energy Use: Nuclear Power

Online version for easy viewing.

This project started as an assignment in my Graphic Design II class in Fall 2020, where we were tasked with creating an infographic poster on any topic we pleased.

Graphics

Early in the project, I became fascinated with an icon: the radiation trefoil, which represents a particle with rays emanating from it. Trefoils are geometric shapes based on three overlapping circles, each centered on the points of an equilateral triangle, and they have powerful symbolic significance.

I realized I could take the flags or heraldry of the different countries I was comparing, and stylize them as radiation trefoils. I made a few basic rules for myself—each emblem must have the same sized particle at the center, keep as much of the original trefoil intact as possible, and involve only as many transformations as absolutely needed. To be honest, I had a bit too much fun with them.

Revision

It was difficult to arrange the country badges neatly, especially with the stark vertical of the long paper and the fact that 10 is kind of a hard number of things to neatly group together (9 is 3x3, 8 can form a cross, but 10 is hard to arrange unless you like 2 boring rows of 5).

I wanted hexagons to formalize the ordering a little and mimic a nuclear reactor core. I made a very nice 3 / 4 / 3 arrangement, only to then realize that I couldn't easily add the necessary label to the U.S.A. badge because it was now stuck in the middle of everything else. That's what led to the final two hexagons being offset.

Behance thumbnails tend to crop things up in unexpected ways, so when I uploaded my early versions, the large trefoil at the top of the poster was cut in half. I ended up being so happy with the interrupted shape of the trefoil stuck into the corner that I pushed it to extremes in the final, shoving it to the side as much as I could while keeping it recognizable, providing a really fun interplay of scale and continuity.

I ensured a strict grouping of the poster into thirds (title and intro, hexagons, and the charts and small print at the bottom) and reinforced a strong S-curve, leading the eye with intentional magenta highlights and the placement of the graphics. What was once my most visually chaotic work became by far the most formalized.