Have a Good Life

Even though I am not a graphic designer, I really appreciate the opportunity try to rub shoulders with those types of people. I like to read the things they share and analyze how they approach tasks and design.
In education, design really takes a back seat. Sometimes, even in the trunk. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
I fancy myself as someone who pays attention to good design, and I think about it. "Thinking about it" is usually 95% of the solution. If you just look at it and think for a moment, you're more than most of the way there.
So, Piper and I got an assignment to collect and present some information on the time our office has spent on professional development with teachers this year.
I compiled the data from 18 people and put it into a spreadsheet. We used Numbers, Pages, and Acorn to create the infographic.
I haven't ever used Acorn, but I bought it a few weeks ago, and I have been waiting for an opportunity to use it. I am glad something presented itself.
The infographic itself is a Pages document (11 x 17). The images are from some image pack I downloaded years ago, but haven't had any reason to use. To get the triangle graphs, I had to create them in Numbers, then paste an image of them into a Pages document and "Mask with Shape..." to get them right. I wish I could mask graphs in Pages (or Numbers) with a shape. That would be really nice. I tried to do it in Acorn, but I couldn't figure that out either.  Piper pulled the + signs from somewhere and Instant Alpha-ed the white background so they looked better.
I thought it was pretty fun creating it. Even though it took a long time to do, it was worth it. I learned a lot, and created something beautiful in the end.
Here is the Prezi my boss used in the presentation to the principals in the district:

http://prezi.com/uwqeo1eqxza1/ebl-year-in-review/