As this is your own project and not a campaign commissioned by a client, what outcome are you aiming for?
CHRISTINE ZIMMERMANN: The project is intended to highlight the continuing under-representation of women in politics. From a design perspective, we use our lab projects as a way of exploring topics where we, as female communication designers, see untapped potential. Our primary interest, alongside data visualisation, lay in exploring the opportunities offered by cross-media communication.
Why the political focus? You could have focused on women in business instead.
CHRISTINE ZIMMERMANN: In politics, the voting population – our target audience – can exert a direct influence at the next election, which is why we worked with this data. The project should therefore also be seen as a clear call to action, encouraging people to explore the dataset, think and take action.
How difficult was it to prepare and visualise the database?
CHRISTINE ZIMMERMANN: The data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union was in very good condition – it had been reliably collected and was sufficiently detailed. The values cover all countries, including allocation to continents and historical trends since 1950. It's important, however, to present the data in a way that is not too difficult for our target audience to understand and to make the information available in easy stages. Visualising complex data in a way that is not only informative but also aesthetically pleasing is one of the most rewarding parts of our job as information designers.
You have supplemented digital processing with analogue products. Why?
CHRISTINE ZIMMERMANN: For this project, we wanted to find out how best to prepare data and content so that it would perform well on different channels – from social media clips to posters and T-shirts. There’s no doubt that digital channels let you reach a wide audience quickly and efficiently. However, when someone is presented with an analogue product, it creates a tangible memory. Unlike a fleeting social media clip that disappears in seconds, a physical object can retain its impact for a long time.