Explainist » activism

A Cartoony Healthcare Reform Explanation (& Possibly Another on the Way)

Tom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:07:49 +0000

Here’s a snappy doodle-based explanatory editorial on America’s favorite fightin’ words, from Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin Blog:

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

(Incidentally, Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin is a great guide to explaining and problem-solving through simple sketches.)

If you liked that, you might want to fund Health Reform: A Visual Explanation. Chicago artist Ray Noland is seeking investors for a series of animated infographic movies to explain the issues:

We are asking to raise 5k to get started on this project by the time Congress is back in session in September. Ultimately, we will need a bit more to complete the series. As we produce more we are hoping to garner additional support to continue. Our goal is to explain the minutiae of the forth-coming Health Care Reform bill for ourselves and for YOU.

[via Information Aesthetics]

Explainers Playing With Their Food

Tom — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:39:28 +0000

Here’s another terrific explanatory video. This one meshes stop-motion animation with infographics to explain the importance of eating local food (in this case, Canadian local food).

Hellmann’s short film (Eat Real. Eat Local) from Yoho Yue on Vimeo.

The Canadian creative houses Oglivy Toronto, CRUSH, and Sons and Daughters created the spot for the Hellman’s Mayonnaise “Eat Real. Eat Local” campaign.

CRUSH creative director Gary Thomas explains what was involved in creating the video here:

We have done other interactive pieces, but this was far and away the biggest single project. For a start, it’s nearly three minutes long, involved a twenty hour shoot with two sets of stop frame animation, a month of CG pre viz where we literally built every shot in CG ahead of time so that everyone could be a part of the process. The schedule had a really tight finishing schedule so we really needed to have all the nuts and bolts worked out before the shoot.

We had a lot of Crush on this project at various points. Stefan Woronko and myself were initially responsible for the creative direction on the Crush side, taking the hard dry statistics and finding different ways to present them in our “world” (a family dinner table). We then added Yoho Yue and Gav Patel who added design and animation elements. The CG team consisted of department head Aylwin Fernando (who didn’t sleep very much), and a team four other animators. We also had four Flame artists led by Greg Dunlop who tracked cleaned roto’d and composited all the shots. We had Kim Knight at Crush Cuts as our editor so we were able the process streamlined.

[via Information Aesthetics]

The Trouble with Fisheries, Explained

Tom — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:28:40 +0000

This tidy site promoting alternative approaches to fishing exemplifies how to get a political message across: explaining the issue clearly and fully trumps hot air rhetoric every time. Nearly all the text on the site is integrated into crisp infographics, which gets you over the hurdle of making sense of a complex set of problems.

[via Dave]

Why Stop Signs Should Mean Yield…

Tom — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:47:27 +0000

… for bike riders in Oregon, that is. I really like this simple animated video by Spencer Boomhower that explains the rationale behind a proposed law to allow bike riders to execute a “rolling stop” in certain situations.

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

Wouldn’t it be great to have this sort of elegant explanation for all the propositions that end up on ballots every November? In my explainist utopia, they would be playing in a continuous loop at polling places.

[via Nutintuit Studio]

Know Your Street Vendors

Tom — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:26:30 +0000

Dave came across this remarkable piece of explanation from the Street Vendor Project (SVP). As part of their mission to champion and empower New York’s 10,000+ vendors, SVP members teamed up with designer Candy Chang and The Center for Urban Pedagogy to create a series of infographic-heavy brochures that demystify regulations and other challenges for New York vendors.

Many street vendors aren’t fluent English speakers, so it’s essential the imagery in these brochures does the heavy explanation lifting. This is work from the front lines of infographics.

The full brochures aren’t available, but you can download two PDF samples from the Street Vendor Project Web site.

[via information aesthetics]