"From: Nicholas Kristof Subject: the power of art
in september i traveled with bill gates to africa to look at his work fighting aids there. while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers.
bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn't the article itself that had grabbed him so much -- it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.
No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.
I'm sending you a copy of the story and graphic by interoffice mail. whoever did the graphic should take a bow.
nick kristof"
I recently have become very interested in the field of information graphics, the visual representation of complex data. It appeals to both the detail-oriented/mathematical side of my brain and my creative/aesthetic-conscious side. It's a fun challenge to synthesize something that is very confusing into a form more visually palatable to the public.
Working with this network of scientists is providing me with ample opportunity to try out some info graphics, so stay tuned!
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