Jennifer BriselliTMC 2013School of DesignCarnegie Mellon University

visual explanation process

1. assignment

The assignment for this project was to “explain some aspect of the Big Picture of Global Sustainability.”

Acting as a client, Rosemary Lapka, on behalf of Ingredion, a global food ingredients manufacturer, asked each of us to choose from a list of topics dealing with sustainability.

Our aim was to explain the topic and its relevance, as well as current and future challenges surrounding the issue, in a 60-90 second video without advocating for a particular conclusion or call to action.

The intended audience was left open for interpretation, with encouragement to consider Ingredion’s employees at all levels and across the globe.

2. topic selection

I considered a few topics but ultimately settled on food security. I was familiar with the general concept but more in the context of urban food deserts and less as a global issue, so it seemed like an interesting opportunity to both learn about the topic and translate that new knowledge into a visual explanation.

Food Security is generally defined as a measure of:

ensured access to essential nutrition

or

a household or country’s ability to provide physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food

3. research

I researched food security and was most interested to learn how nuanced the idea of hunger really is. When people think about hunger, it’s common to conjure images of starving children on the other side of the planet, or consider the issue one of poverty of resources.

However, food security is more than just having “enough food.” For many people, including those in wealthier developed countries, eating nutritious meals on a regular basis is complicated by political and economic forces that make it hard to access and prepare those meals. Solving world hunger isn’t simply a matter of growing enough crops for a larger population.

4. sketching ideas

A synthesis of the research pointed to a three part explanation, which would become the heart of the message:

Food security is more nuanced than hunger. It’s not enough for there to be enough food; people must also have access to it, and it must be nutritious.

The next question would be how best to convey that message.

5. storyboarding

I considered a few different versions of the explanation. One of the earlier ideas was to use pacman to illustrate the nuances of food security; most people familiar with the game would recognize that pacman just eats pellets, but I could use a hungry video game character to show that sometimes those pellets are hard to get to. It was a silly idea that I had not intended to pursue until multiple people suggested I play with it a bit.

So I did.

6. digital sketching

I had an idea of what I wanted to show: pacman could illustrate each of the three components of food security, and explain how those components are threatened.

But I wasn’t sure how to execute on that vision; I had trouble envisioning a beginning and end to the narrative. So I just started in the middle and hoped the rest would sort itself out.

I shared these early video scenes, meant more to give visual form to the ideas than to represent the final idea, and got a lot of great feedback in class.

I decided to push the video game aesthetic all the way through, rather than mix styles.

7. iteration

With continued feedback during in-class critiques and collaboration during independent work sessions, I refined my introduction, three explanation segments, and overall narrative. I also worked on my idea for a map made of pacmen (as small multiples) to illustrate the main statistics (this affects a lot of people!) and at the same time, remind people that it remains a challenge here in the U.S. as much as anywhere else.

I also decided to narrate the video, where earlier iterations were meant to be read as text on screen. Once I recorded myself reading the script, it seemed like everything else fell into place.

8. the whole story

The final scene came to me only near the end of the process. I had found a song by The Advantage, who record instrumentalized versions of classic video games, and realized I was definitely driving the video game metaphor as far as it could go, so why not end with a classic video game menu screen.

However, just as this assignment was not to provide an exhaustive lesson but merely a “wikipedia introduction,” it seemed only fitting to end the video not with a “you’ve beaten the game!” message but with a start screen.

So I did.