The World as 100 People

Available as a print in these languages:
EN • PT • FR • ES • AR • NL • DE

This started life as an email from my Nanny, pinned to the kitchen wall. Many years after the email on the kitchen wall I found this information again on the website 100People.org.

This idea of simplifying an idea about the world so that children could understand appealed to me.

DESIGN CHOICES

The design is round because the world is round, and I wanted to make it a defined and pleasing shape.
The colours are chosen from flags. It uses natural frequencies instead of percentages.
This is a deliberate choice so that it can be as accessible to as many people as possible.

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Overview Effect

I wanted to get the audience to think about the Overview effect. This was coined by Frank White in the book The Overview Effect, Space Exploration and Human Evolution. It is a cognitive shift that some astronauts get. It happens when people look down at the earth and realise that everyone who ever lived and died, every person that has ever been born was within this tiny blue speck in space. At this point divisions such as race, gender, country and language fall away. In some ways of course this is ironic, as I am showing the divisions!

This graphic was actually tweeted by Astronaut Chris Hadfield, and reprinted in many publications.
Oh, and if you’ve made it this far, perhaps you enjoy my free guide to data storytelling