Birthday

Designing my own birthday list, showing names, dates and whether to buy a present and whether to send cards, texts and emails , initially seemed fairly straightforward. However, the brief had reminded me that the final design needed to look good as it would be displayed at all times.

Initially I sketched a few traditional-style lists but these were all pretty unremarkable. I decided to think about the idea of birthdays. The image of a birthday cake kept recurring. I set myself the challenge of a list in the shape of a cake and came up with the initial idea below:

Realising my idea was much more difficult. As with the previous exercise I really struggled with getting a group of colours that worked well together. After some experimentation I settled on three colours representing three different types of birthday cake - chocolate, sponge and carrot.

I had already decided on the months around the edge of the cake on a silver tray and decided to add dates as part of the cake slice. Initially I was going to add a key with the names against the dates but this looked messy - and I also wanted the diagram to contain as much of the information as possible. I therefore decided to add a further ring of type with the names of the people whose birthdays were repesented. I went with red type to keep the connection with the numbers on the slices. 

    
I was almost finished but realised that the key at the bottom of the page was too big and seemed to overwhelm the chart - which should be the main element of the poster. After some resizing I ended up with the poster below:

I think that the poster manages to communicate all of the relevant information in an attractive and original way. If I was marketing this poster I think I would have a rotating chart which the user could turn as the months pass.