In March 2020 my manager at Mississippi State University's High Performance Computing Center and I were approached to create graphics for a scientific grant proposal focused around the concept of using renewable power and water sources to improve living standards in low income housing. The primary goal was to visually portray the cycle of processes described in the proposal's short term model and long term model with which households would function. The challenge was to make the graphics visually appealing, aligned with the branding already in use, matched to specific size requirements, and clearly designed to be easily understood in the context of the proposal. Additionally, the client wanted to emphasize the human impact of the scientific solutions being proposed.
For the short term model's graphic, we wanted a visual comparison of how low income housing currently functions versus how it could using the proposed model. In this model, there would be separate, communal facilities that served multiple households in providing energy and water as well as recycling the waste they put out. We leaned heavily on familiar iconography and simple labels to represent the more complex concepts explained in the proposal. And I used color to invoke negative versus positive emotions from viewers as well as clearly present the images of "dirty" versus "clean" energy.
Initially, the artwork did not include small "comic strip" style images at the bottom, but we felt it was crucial, given that the artwork was sized to fit no more than a half page on an 8.5 x 11" paper, to include slice of life views of one family. This allowed us to better emphasize the contrast in the human condition.
For the long term model's graphic, we focused simply on showing how the model would work without comparison. In this model, the technology required would be integrated directly into each individual unit, allowing a household to function more independently. Once again, we strove to simultaneously demonstrate the processes while depicting the quality of life provided to a family by the model. Icons and labels, in context of a caption and the overarching proposal, did the heavy lifting of getting our meaning across.
In September 2020, my manager and I were asked to supply an additional graphic to the now further revised proposal. The goal was to show how the team behind the proposal would engage the lower income neighborhoods their models were meant to serve (particularly in the form of college students from those households) in improving and finalizing the models. My solution was to create a comic strip depicting the path a college student from a lower income background could take from being a focus group participant to directly working with the team thru her university to seeing her own neighborhood benefit from putting the models into practice.
