PROJECT 1 PROCESS

Luke BeemerInformation Design 21 September 2017Prof. Deal

RESEARCH

When approached with the topic of a socially conscious inforgraphic, I knew I wanted to do something slightly off-beat from the typical health topics. I have always been fascinated with aliens and a fan of entertainment exploring alien life, such as “The X-Files,” and I find it interesting learning who among the people around me believes in alien life. This idea led to exploring different statistics around the web regarding belief in alien life, why people do or do not believe, and different statistics about alien reports. The following are the statistics I obtained from different resources around the web:

1. List of number of UFO reports categorized by what state they were reported from. http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxloc.html

2. American men (65 percent) were significantly more likely than women (46 percent) to believe in extraterrestrial intelligent life. Those over 65 were less likely to believe than those who are younger; people ages 30 to 44 are the most likely to believe, at 60 percent. People in the South and West (both at 57 percent) were more likely to assert aliens’ existence than those skeptical Northeasterners (47 percent). The surveyors asked Americans who said smart aliens don’t exist to explain why. Nearly two-thirds responded that it’s because “humans were created by a God or another higher being,” and 31 percent chose the response that “the Earth is unique—it is the only place capable of sustaining intelligent life.” So if there are smart aliens, why haven’t they contacted us? Forty-two percent of Americans said it’s because “human technology is not advanced enough for us to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligent life.” Thirty percent believe that “extra-terrestrial intelligent life has already contacted us but the government has covered it up.” And nearly one-quarter responded that aliens have “contacted or visited Earth, but long before the development of human civilization.” People are a little less sure about the wisdom of trying to contact aliens. Only 43 percent of Americans support a program that “aims to send a digital message describing life on earth to other intelligent civilizations in space,” while 31 percent say the message shouldn’t be sent.A past poll by the same group, in 2013, found that 50 percent of Americans thought that extraterrestrial life exists, while only 38 percent said that intelligent life exists. However, a 2012 survey by National Geographic found that 77 percent of Americans think that aliens have visited Earth.

http://www.newsweek.com/most-people-believe-intelligent-aliens-exist-377965

3. More than 33 million U.K. citizens believe in extraterrestrial life, compared to just over 27 million — less than half the country — who believe in God.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/alien-believers-outnumber-god_n_1968259.html

http://www.destinationamerica.com/thehauntist/9-statistics-regarding-americans-and-their-paranormal-beliefs/

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/pet7pa08ob/tabs_OPI_Extra_Terrestrial_Life_20150916.pdf

IDEATION

The following sketches are my initial interpretations of the data regarding belief in aliens. I started with the idea of using an upside-down cross as part of a UFO beam to represent how the majority of peope who don’t believe in alien life say they believe this because of their religion. Then, after realizing that this wasn’t enough data to carry an infographic, I moved on to crop-circle and UFO beam ways to represent the different categories of people who believe in aliens, such as gender, race, political party, etc. I worked with the idea of a UFO shape within the larger shape of an eye for a while, to represent the social consiousness of how we interpret the world being shown in our belief of unbelief in aliens. Are we alone, or co-habitating a universe?

COMPUTER REFINEMENT

When heading onto the computer for refinement, I was excited about the idea of using the metaphor of an eye and a UFO shape doubling as the pupil of the eye to display the different categories of who believes in aliens. However, this idea presented a disconnect between the idea of the eye and that of the UFO, and it never was able to reach a place where the two ideas worked together seamlessly. So, I eventually ditched the eye metaphor and chose to

focus on just the UFO shaped graphic. From there, I realized there needed to be more emphasis on the fact that all the data comes from the U.S., so I started working on ways to incorporate that, and then realized that this would be a good chance to utilize the research I found regarding how many UFO sightings have been reported in each state. I then created a density map to match the starry background, and called out the data for the five states with the highest amount of all-time reports. This drew a nice parallel between UFO reports and who believes in UFO’s broken down into to different categories.

BELIEF IN ALIENS by percentage of people who believe in “intelligent

extraterrestrial life.” Statistics come from a survey

conducted by YouGov in September of 2015,

interviewing 998 U.S. citizens.

Race

White

Nor

thea

stM

idw

est

Sout

h

Wes

t

BlackHispanic

< $50K

$50 -100K>

$100KU

ndisclosed

Repu

blic

an

Indep

ende

nt

Democ

ratic

18 - 29

Male

62%

46%

53%60% 52%

48%

64%

50%

46%

38%59%

58%

55%

58%58%

52%

57%

57%

51%

47%

Female

30 - 44 45 - 64> 65

The question of life outside of our own planet is a highly debated topic, but one that forms worldviews and contributes to interpretations of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Are humans part of a unique civilization, or is Earth surrounded by other habitable planets with alien lifeforms?

Gender

Politic

al Pa

rty

Age

Household income

Regio

Are

We

Alone?

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESSOF ALIEN LIFE

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

OF ALIEN LIFEAre We Alone?

BELIEF IN ALIENS by percentage of people who believe in “intelligent

extraterrestrial life.” Statistics come from a survey

conducted by YouGov in September of 2015,

interviewing 998 U.S. citizens.

Race

White

Nor

thea

stM

idw

est

Sout

h

Wes

t

BlackHispanic

< $50K

$50 -100K> $100K

Undisclosed

Repu

blic

an

Indep

ende

nt

Democ

ratic

18 - 29

Male

62%

46%

53%60% 52%

48%

64%

50%

46%

38%59%

58%

55%

58%58%

52%

57%

57%

51%

47%

Female

30 - 44 45 - 64> 65

The question of life outside of our own planet is a highly debated topic, but one that forms worldviews and contributes to interpretations of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Are humans part of a unique civilization, or is Earth surrounded by other habitable planets with alien lifeforms?

Gender

Politic

al Pa

rty

Age

Household income

Regio

n

The question of life outside of our own planet is a highly debated topic, but one that forms worldviews and contributes to interpretations of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Are humans part of a unique civilization, or is Earth surrounded by other habitable planets with alien lifeforms?

Are

We

Alone?

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESSOFALIEN LIFE

Race

White

Nor

thea

stM

idw

est

Sout

h

Wes

t

BlackHispanic

< $50K

$50 -100K> $100K

Undisclosed

Repu

blic

an

Indep

ende

nt

Democ

ratic

18 - 29

Male

62%

46%

53%60% 52%

48%

64%

50%

46%

38%59%

58%

55%

58%58%

52%

57%

57%

51%

47%

Female

30 - 44 45 - 64> 65

Gender

Politic

al Pa

rty

Age

Household Income

Regio

BELIEF IN ALIENS by percentage of people who believe in “intelligent

extraterrestrial life.” Statistics come from a survey

conducted by YouGov in September of 2015,

interviewing 998 U.S. citizens.

FINAL VERSION

The final version combines the infographic of a UFO separating belief in aliens by category, and a density map of where the most UFO sightings have happened in the US. The separation of the titles serves to represent the disconnect between what we know about our world and what we believe about the unverse, forcing the title to be read with ominous pauses.

REFLECTION

From this process, I have learned a lot about transferring data into graphical and typographic elements that communicate an overall message at an overview, as well as more intricate pieces of data when the infographic is read more closely. It it more that just presenting facts, it’s presenting what you want to say about the facts and how you want to guide the viewer to think about the facts. They can make their own judgements, but any way you present data will have some effect on how the viewer interprets it.