2016's Top Artists

Back in the Spring of 2017, I was enrolled in a class called visible language. In the class, we explored the various ways that one could use graphic design to present information. During the class, we engaged in an exercise called an "Explanation Illustration". I worked with a group of people to come up with a topic that we could depict visually, and we came up with the idea to visualize the previous years top 10 Hip-Hop artists using the Billboard top 100 list. We wanted to utilize the play counts of their top two songs, but we quickly found out that Billboard doesn't track the play count of each artists top songs. Previously, the information was represented by album sales, but in the age of streaming, album sales are much harder to represent. I came up with the idea of using Spotify to cross reference with the Billboard information, using the top play counts shown in Spotify. I then created this small infographic using the information collected.

After a few months, I decided to go back to this project and re-assess my idea of how this infographic should be represented. I went back in and reworked it so the its illustrative properties would read more clearly. While I was working on the project, I thought that despite the fact that it was more abstract, it looked visually appealing. However, when I stepped away from it, I realized that it was still hitting a wall of not making too much sense.

After a while of letting this project sit, I decided to come back to it and use my motion design skills to make the infographic more dynamic. Instead of arbitrary spaces, I used spinning records to indicate 10,000,000 plays. As always, there are more tweaks that I want to do to make sure that everything is timed perfectly. For now, however, here is the (mostly) final product.