The iWonder site goes from strength to strength, illustrating a broad range of topics in a straightforward way for inquisitive grown ups. In 2015 I was asked to work on several of these, creating rollover "hotspot" graphics for science and historical subjects.

As before, the guidelines supplied by the producer had a specified pallete of web-friendly colours that could be used, and shapes needed to simple, using a minimum of curves and angles, in order to pass the UX guidelines.

First up, an illustration for a guide to the Suffragette movement. As the facts were checked by the producers, the design had several iterations prior to this. The wilting flowers works very well I think for the marital breakdown implied in the text.

Next, a graphic to illustrate the man-made causes of flooding. As usual, complicated ideas to condense down, but the springboard came from the brief. The field (bottom left) was very satisfying, and went through several iterations of design of the corn/crops.The concrete city (top right) originally had a foreman type of figure, however we decided to drop any characters and focus purely on the objects. The angular river was designed to recede into the background - a curved version drew too much attention away from the 4 smaller elements. Finding the right use of colour was interesting, and the design had several versions before using the arrangement below. 

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcdqxsg

Below is one of the work in progress versions. You can see that the areas around the elements are still very rough.

Now, an infographic illustrating the different ways in which British citizens sheltered from the Blitz. I loved doing the Morrison shelter (bottom right), as simply as possible and working out a simple way to show someone sheltering inside a cage without breaking up the shape of the figure. The London Underground tunnel icon (top right) was interesting to create as well, as the guides had to be legible on mobile with exactly the same design, so I couldn't cram it full of sleeping figures. The person peeping round the door of the Anderson shelter (top left) was a late amend request by the producer in order to give all the images a figurative element, and it makes the image a bit more lighthearted too. He's going, "Oh, has it stopped?"

Link (part 3 is my graphic, part 2 was created by another designer): http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/ztsd7hv

Another part of the Blitz brief was this feature on acronyms, used in love letters sent between soldiers and the sweethearts during the conflict. A different pallete was chosen, completely blue! Perfect for creating hearts. This one seemed simple but had a few surprises. The thought balloon from the soldier's head had to be packed close together, as the whole image had to be used as one icon, surrounded by a keyline. The "NORWICH" icon was changed several times, made sexier and more like a modern pair of ladies knickers (almost a thong, essentially) to fit with the "sexy" theme, but was revised after the historians pointed out that wartime knickers were not so revealing! The last icon, "OOLAAKOEW" was hard to pin down and simplify, originally there had been hearts bobbing on the surface but these had to be taken away so that the "Kiss" element was stronger.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zsxrk7h#zgfw2p3