When Statistics Become Art
Posted on September 2, 2008 - Filed Under Inspiration
I’ve written an article before on information design. Basically, it is the art of of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness. Chris Jordan is an artist who uses this in his art. In fact, his art is dedicated to representing shocking statistics in forms that we can understand.
When people hear statistics that are in the millions and billions, the numbers are so vast that we can’t process the information. How can we possible visualize how much space 40 million paper cups take up? It tough, so we don’t bother. We ignore the information. But 40 million paper cups is how many cups get used in America every day, mostly for coffee. And they get shipped to landfills.
But how would this motivate us to change if we can’t even comprehend the information? Chris’s solution was to display the statistics in a way that we can digest. That we can gauge our impact.
This is a shot by Chris Jordan of the 40 million paper cups. It equals the volume of a 40 story building. The Statue of Liberty is thrown in to give a size reference. Wow. With cigarettes, he constructed a piece that made up of 65,000 cigarette packs. Because that’s how many teenagers start smoking every month in the US. Hard statistics presented in a way that we can comprehend.
I highly recommend that you take 15 minutes and check out his talk at the 2008 TED Conference:
- Christian
Comments
2 Responses to “When Statistics Become Art”
Leave a Reply
nice find. there has to be some software out there that will allow you to creatively present data.
If you find any, please let me know. I’m of the old fashion method of relying on excel to make graphs and pasting visual representations over the bars.