The Crisis of Credit
Interaction and Media Designer, Jonathan Jarvis created this animated infographic in part to help himself understand what was happening as the financial system began to melt down at the end of 2008.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized distills the economic crisis into a short and simple story by giving it form. It also argues that designers have the ability to see a complex situation, then turn around and communicate it to others. By giving graphic form to the credit crisis, it becomes comprehensible. Not only do economic activities take shape, but new relationships can emerge between these shapes.
My interest in the project stems from 3 primary sources: my simple desire to understand it, diagramming work I conducted at UNICEF, and my earlier motion design work.
As we enter an era where more and more of the big systems that underpin the developed world begin to develop cracks information graphics like these will increasingly be important and required to help the general public understand what is happening and why it happened.
What are your thoughts? Did this video help clarify the situation for you, or just confuse you more?
Liked this article? You may also enjoy:
- • Research: Visualization for Learning
- • What is Visual Thinking?
- • “Abstract City: My Way” in the New York Times
- • [Podcast] Information Visualization: Beyond Reporting and Into Collaboration
- • Running a Visual Thinking Event? Let Us Know!
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