Base layer design

Tried to add this last night, but sometimes Blogger won't let me post photos. More to come later.

Hey, I have made some big changes, I think this is going in a good direction. I decided to take the idea of height of a stack of $100 dollar bills and compare that to objects... the animation will demonstrate the change in scale.

Flash wireframe

Problems with scale

Hi Everyone,

Part of my goal is to show just how vast the differences in wealth between people (even among those we consider rich) can be.

Because the range is so vast and hard to get a grasp of, I tried comparing "your" salary with those of the rich and plotted it against time. Many of you did not really see the connection and suggested that I use objects or something more concrete or tangible. Things you can buy, etc.

What I keep bumping into is that the scale of these things is vast. I'm struggling in determining how to show things other than numbers but I don't think piles can convey that. Let me show you what I mean.


Here is a bar graph of most of my celebrities, as you can see, Oprah and George Lucas tower above the rest, and its hard to even tell the difference between some of the others (this is number of Bentley's they could buy in a year with their earnings)


And here is what happens when you add someone like Bill Gates:



The people who were towering before, George Lucas and Oprah become tiny, and everyone else drops off completely. So the problem is that I end up having to change the scale of the chart in order to see differences. Maybe I need to do some zooming? But I think the idea of showing piles of money or stacks of yachts just won't convey correctly? Anybody have any thoughts?

Jim

getting there...

I'm going to have to have a key I've decided. So here is what I've been thinking.

Design work

Here is a sketch of one "branch" of my food map. For the final piece, I plan on having five different "branches" representing a range of foods. Here you can get an idea of the design scheme and typography. The first picture shows all of the type I scanned in and vectorized using Illustrator.

I want to fade different colors into each other for each branch instead of just the branch. I have an idea of how to do it but haven't tried it yet.

Representation and color problems

I thought I'd upload what I've been working on because I've been running into a few problems and would love some feedback. My first problem is representation. So on the maps below, the peachish dots show population density, the brown overlay shows crime rates per neighborhood, and the pencils show elementary schools. My large representation problem is the schools. I want to differentiate between elementary, middle, high, and universities. Universities definitely can't be the same as an elementary school. So right now I have pencils and I don't like them at all. I'd like something a little less literal for this map. I was thinking about just different shapes but that would get into the idea of having to have a key. I also thought about using the tip of the pencil only for something maybe. I don't know.

The other big problem I have deals with colors. I can't get a color palette to work well. If I stick with colors that somewhat relate to the data I'm showing, they don't go well together. If I just choose colors that I like and I think look good together, it doesn't make sense.

So suggestions would be awesome.