For my final project, I chose to create an infographic that examines the creation and impact of email on communication, literacy, and education. One of the hardest parts of this project was figuring out how to fit so much information into a mostly visual format, and as such I had to make tough choices about what to include and what to leave out. To be honest I am unsure of how successful I was, as there were times where I wanted to delve further into the ways that email has shaped the way we communicate, but I question whether my visual representation effectively accomplishes this. For example, I resorted to including two quotations from the literature on this topic rather than ‘pure’ images, which may technically be skirting the rules of an infographic (which is meant to present information graphically rather than through text).
I also wanted to add a “Speculative Futures” section to imagine what email might look like in the coming years, and tackle questions such as: Will AI write and respond to our emails for us? Will email even still exist, or will we move on to something totally different? Again I felt challenged by how to show this visually as others may interpret the symbols or images differently from myself, and so I included short bits of text to share my imagining of this potential future alongside symbols to represent these ideas.
For these reasons I was tempted to choose another medium, such as a podcast or essay, where I would have more space to use words to convey my thoughts on this topic. However, I wanted to explore the affordances and limitations of images as a text, and so committed to creating this infographic. You can be the judge of how successful (or not) I was with this endeavour!
*All images and graphics used for this project are credited to Canvas
Link to my Infographic: The Email