Beaver Dam Infographic
Design and Content Choices
Creating this infographic was fun. I chose to write about building beavers’ homes because I love animals and nature. When I thought about processes animals engage in—like building a bird’s nest, gathering honey for a hive, or hunting for dinner—I really liked the beaver dam choice. The dams are absolute genius, and I’m always amazed by this sophisticated, complex behavior.
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I organized my infographic as a step-by-step process, using a standard template from Canva.com because the beavers’ home-building process consists of a series of sequential steps and also because the pre-made template was easy to update and professional-looking. Also, it was a fortunate coincidence that the template had a wavy, vertical swoop in the background, which I was able to fill with a blue, textured pattern to create the feeling of a stream. I was especially pleased with this subtle technique to reinforce the topic. Creating the right balance of textual information and graphics was a bit tricky, because I had trouble finding free, quality images online, yet I wanted the infographic to appeal to young children who love pictures. I settled on a mix of labeled, encyclopedia-style drawings of habitats and cartoon-styled drawings of beavers. The cartoon beavers are all in construction garb, to continue the theme of beavers as construction workers all the way down to the bottom of the infographic. The beaver cartoons will help hold the interest of the children, and the other drawings are colorful, interesting and information-rich. Text was written carefully, using just enough to convey meaning clearly without overwhelming. Headings are written in parallel both in style and grammatically, using imperative verbs for each step. The four text sizes used on the chart are sufficiently varied to distinguish each one and demonstrate that the differences in size are clearly intentional. I worked to achieve visual balance by placing the labeled drawings, as well as the cartoon beavers, on both sides of the poster. I spent a fair amount of time arranging the text on the page, moving the numbers and text boxes around to align them vertically along the margins, with the edges of pictures, or with one another. I did this to create harmony between the steps, which gives a professional feel to the work. I’m pleased with the result; I believe my efforts to adhere to a number of different stylistic and informational guidelines succeeded.
Audience
I wanted to make a poster for young schoolchildren and include textual descriptions along with images. I decided on a fourth-grade level audience because by the fourth grade children can read well, are curious about animals and will appreciate images along with the text. I kept in mind that although fourth graders can read well, they probably don’t want to read too much. Therefore, I created a colorful infographic with only the minimum amount of text required to convey the ideas. In targeting fourth-grade children, I realized some of them may know a great deal about beavers already, and some may know nothing at all. I tried to keep the infographic interesting regardless of the children’s prior levels of knowledge by including some facts that might be new to everyone. For example, I wrote that the beavers’ purpose in building dams is to slow down the flow of water so their lodges won’t be swept away in the current. Also, I distinguished between dams, which serve to create ponds, and lodges, which serve as the beavers’ homes. My experience with children this age is they are raptly immersed in learning and generally crane their necks to look at any visuals held up by the teacher. They are strongly interested and will likely pride themselves on the information they glean from the infographic and tell their parents, and anyone else who will listen, what they’ve learned in school. I expect the infographic will hang on the wall in an elementary-school classroom. A time may come when the teacher will discuss the infographic with the class, pointing out the various steps in the beavers’ home-building process and adding some information of their own. Generally, the infographic will be available for children to look at more casually, as they are hanging up coats, lining up for recess, or gazing around the room. The colorful blue background, fun cartoon beavers and interesting drawings will attract their attention during these times.