📰 Noteworthy stories for today #22
NASA Pirates, Unequal suffering, Uncharted territory & a Rookie's Guide
Dive Originals: Rookie’s Guide #2
How I made the “Portraits of Lives Lost” series
A year on from the unjust murder of Breonna Taylor and with the trial of George Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin beginning it's preparations - it seemed apt to take a look back at the Portraits of Live Lost series I put together at the end of last year and show how I created them and some of the design decisions I made. This is a Paid Subscriber post so if you haven’t yet you can subscribe for £5 a month to access it. Read the second of the Rookie’s Guide to Data Viz here.
NASA Pirates
Here’s an issue I had never considered, when completing NASA’s long awaited James Webb Space Telescope (started in 2007!) there were, and still are, serious discussions about it being stolen by pirates on its trip to French Guiana where it is to be launched. So much so that the exact date of departure is being kept a closely guarded secret. Turns out, as proved by previous “lens-nappings”, this isn’t that far out of the realms of possibility. Continue reading about the threat of NASA pirates on The Atlantic.
Unequal Suffering
Yaryna Serkez at The New York Times has written a really stark and poignant piece on how the suffering felt by different communities was far from equal in 2020. Illustrated with a series of damning charts through-out, the style of data visuals adds a really human feel - which Yaryna actually commented on in a twitter thread was her original intention. Read on The New York Times to see how different sections of the population fared during the pandemic.
Uncharted Territory
Another Data Viz themed piece, this time from my old haunt The Economist’s new Data newsletter “Off The Charts” where they’ve taken a look at the different hoops they have to jump through when creating maps - including having someone paste black labels over selected maps in every issue. Even though I worked with them fairly frequently last year I didn’t quite realise the lengths they sometimes need to go to, to avoid getting entire shipments of an issue seized by a country that has disputed borders. Read more on the Off The Charts (and subscribe to it too, while you’re at it, come on guys get it together).
That’s all, see ya
M