Category Archives: Comics

A Brief History of the Perception of Time

Lately there seems to be a lot of buzz about librarians getting into data science-type roles, and mastery of creating infographics is becoming a hot skill. While standard office programs like Excel and PowerPoint have basic chart tools, they are very institutional in presentation. With so much data out there, being able to capture it in an engaging visual is important. Infographics are taking over statistical reporting everywhere from cost of living around the world to how to keep food fresh in your fridge.

Last year at a Research Staff meeting, a coworker brought up the use of a free* infographics tool called Canva, which she heard about at a law library conference. As a bit of a graphic design nerd, I hopped on to create an account and play around. They have a lot of free layouts and sizes for various print and social media posting, and a decent sized art library. I personally did not find it difficult to navigate, but I have experience using programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. However, I would say anyone with any basic image editing experience will not experience a steep learning curve. But for those of us who are used to all the bells and whistles of Photoshop and Illustrator…don’t get excited. You will find what you can do with this application more limited.

I thought Canva would be perfect to illustrate a comic idea that I’ve had in my head for a while. You know how some things just seem to drag while other things seem to go by in a blink of an eye, irrespective of the actual amount of time? Waiting at the bus stop for five minutes feels like torture, while you wonder where two days of weekend went (all you have to do is turn around on Friday and then you see Monday again). So…I plotted it all out on this graph.

Click to read
Click for full size image

Maybe you can relate to some of these, maybe you can’t. Like it says…time is relative.

Granted, it still took me a while to do, but having the pre-set library of graphics made it a lot easier than trying to create this thing in Illustrator from scratch. I am sure serious designers would think I am cheating, but…who has time for that ;-)?

*Layouts or graphics that do not state they are Free on them have an extra charge.

Introducing…the Mass Effect Myers-Briggs Chart!

So, you might have seen these things floating around Facebook. A little chart where you can pick which Harry Potter or Star Wars character you are most like, based on your Myers-Briggs type. Well, I kind of got sick of seeing INTJ’s represented as villains, so I decided to make my own.

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect, and it has such a rich vastness of characters of differing personalities that I thought it would be cool to make my own chart. Please open the full image to read the descriptions.

Now, I am sure that some people may not agree on the classifications. No one fits a partiuclar type perfectly well, though some of the characters show some classic strong preferences towards a certain type.

I also had some debate about including Commander Shepard, considering there are so many different scenarios and customizations…but I think that in most of them, the character represents several variants of ENTJ. Plus, it was either that, or make the ENTJ a villian…which I just could not do…since my extroverted halves often get stuck in the villain class right behind us evil mastermind INTJ’s.