I’ve been working on the chart a lot recently and thinking through all the changes that need to be made, as well as how I might make a much better interactive version for online web viewing.
From a design perspective, I am still committed to two key things:
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There will be a super high-quality, high-resolution version which will be printable on an ISO 216 paper size so that pilots who want it, can easily get a poster version to stick on their wall. (This might be something that I can organise at a really low [non-profit] cost as well, through industry contacts, so I’m looking into this)
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The interactive version of the chart will have clickable hyperlinks (which can be updated and revised as necessary) so that it can direct pilots (both rookies and veterans) towards good online resources for most if not all activities.
Based on this I’m currently exploring how I might change the hidden background architecture and structure of the chart, to both significantly reduce file size and make future updates much, much easier.
At the moment the process of updating the chart both from a design perspective and in terms of the actual content is quite fiddly.
The chart looks great but there are a lot of layers and complexity and the lack of a straightforward hyperlinking method in Adobe Illustrator means that I have to use both this and Adobe InDesign to get to the final end product, which is very time-consuming.
I think I have found a solution, and it will improve the chart and speed up the production process but it will initially take some time to fully deploy, which I am really sorry about. Having said this, a key part of the reason for the time it’s taken so far is because I just don’t like the idea of releasing anything less than perfect for the final and proper public release version of the chart.
Long story cut short, I’m not now going to have a full-on and final version in the first quarter of the year as I’d been aiming to do. I am gutted about this and I know that some people will be understandably frustrated, but I hope in the end it will be really worth it.
For what it’s worth, so far there have been, as far as I can tell, 2,386 unique downloads of the Beta PDFs of the chart since the plug that I got on the Community Beat in January, so I know there is definitely a demand for a chart of activity prompts. Assuming that just half of those people check the chart once a week for ideas on what to do in the game, then this translates into an effective 62,036 clicks per year.
The point I’m making here is really that given the demand, and the fact that it’s a really important chart, I want to make sure that the EVE audience gets something, really good.
I hope this all makes some sense (I’m a bit knackered as I write this!). Either way, I really do appreciate all the support that I’ve had so far from too many people to name here and I will post an update on progress as soon as I can.
Thanks.
Addendum: The complications of infographic design – one super fiddly thing has been to find a way of creating nested radius corner boxes with an even gap all round. I’ve tracked down the math for this (I have a learning disability that means math is really hard for me and I’m no mathematician, but if you’re interested, the formula is [ outer radius - gap distance = inner radius ] ). To speed things up somewhat I’ve now written a small Applescript to do the calculation quickly. The career card/activity boxes will look clean and elegant on the final chart but I suspect hardly anyone using it will be conscious of the effort that went into this small detail. Ho hum. Onwards and upwards …
