FicheTri&Me

#Thing9 - Reflecting on online exhibitions and infographics.......



The first thing I would have to say about creating an online exhibition is that, as I am finding with a lot of these visual communicator "things", is that it is time consuming. If you want your exhibition to look well and make sense, you need to put in the time. Forward planning is essential!

Going at it in a haphazard manner is not the way (as I've learned!), and in future I would definitely map out how I want it to look and feel, and what information I want where, before going at it. Otherwise you spend a lot of time re-doing the same stuff and for a project like this, when there can be so many parts, right down to the smallest image or the curating of a piece of text or whatever, that is not something you want to be doing.

For my "exhibition" I decided to use Wordpress, as I have been using Blogger for this blog, and wanted to try out a different platform. I took the "Budget Summary" leaflet from this year's budget and turned the information into an online exhibition of the main points. Be careful when you are picking the web address of your exhibition! I realised I had put the wrong year in mine at the end..not helpful when it comes to search results.
In general though I found the Wordpress platform quite straightforward to use once I got the hang of it.

I enjoyed playing around with the Infographics - Piktochart is very easy to use. I was using the free version but I would imagine it is a powerful tool if you have the paid version and all the options. Easy to whip up one of these for anything that you might want to draw people's attention to, or explain in an easy way - and very handy for throwing up on social media platforms like facebook, twitter etc. A great way I think of keeping the content on those pages looking fresh and up to date.

Overall, the whole "Visual Communicator" module was an eye opener for me - I discovered a lot of tools that I didn't know existed, and which I feel could all be easily mastered to good effect over time. I look forward to that process!