For this week’s blog post assignment, I focused on the Breathing Process. This poster is designed to target ten-year-olds. This could be used in maybe a health class when learning basic health or perhaps, when learning about the dangers of smoking. It is a simplistic model of a very complex system.
I chose to incorporate this simplistic model for a couple of reasons. The first being the target. Since this is targeting ten-year-olds, I decided to lessen the massive information load that could have accompanied this poster. It is difficult enough for kids of this age to pay attention to subjects that interest them more than health. The simplistic and almost bare boned approach to this poster is to accommodate for that.
This poster focuses on the basic elements of this process. After reading about it myself and watching videos regarding all of the steps that go into the actual process of breathing, I decided to focus on a the most basic and important steps. In my flow chart, you can see that it starts with inhaling through the nasal cavity and ends with exhaling though the same cavity. I focused on two main processes within the larger process of breathing: inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling, or breathing in, begins the entire process, followed by exhaling, or breathing out.
This whole process ends by turning oxygen (o2) into carbon dioxide (co2). We take in oxygen when we inhale and we release carbon dioxide when we exhale. There are far more miniscule processes that occur along with this. However, in an attempt to not overwhelm the viewer and to ensure that I would have enough space on my paper, I stuck to those few processes.
To highlight the differences in the two, I color coded them and changed the type of line they both produce. Inhaling is a solid, purple line and exhaling is a dashed green line. Additionally, I included some brief background information, in simple terms for a ten year old to actually grasp with ease, to each part of the figure.
When designing my poster, I had a couple of layouts in mind. I was originally going to focus on the processes in the lungs. I even drew out the entire rough sketch of the lungs, ,before realizing it needed more. I also was going to try focusing on the nasal cavity and the processes happening at that end, but again felt there should be more. In the end, I ended up combing them and having a full shot, covering all the bases of the process as a general diagram. This, I feel, gives a better overview of the entire process without seeming to informational and doesn’t turn the viewer away. It does not have clutter that may turn off a viewer.
Overall, I am pleased with the way my poster came out. Some of the shading in the lungs and Trachea are hard to see, but the lungs are green and the Trachea purple. I kept it minimal in an attempt, as mentioned, to be as receptive as possible to my target viewer.
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