5th December 2023, was the day that the latest Global carbon Budget was released. Another important annual release from the Global Carbon Project international science team tracking the trends in global carbon emissions and sinks. This is regarded as a key measure of progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement.
I am privileged to be a minor part of the team, helping to produce some of the graphics. The scientific paper is here, the links to all the images and visuals are here and I have included a couple of the images below.
Thanks to all involved for their support and help in producing these important graphics.
This report compiles a first estimate of the total CDR being deployed (2 GtCO2/yr), and is a global assessment of the current state of CDR and the gap we need to close to achieve the Paris temperature goal. Full report is here http://stateofcdr.org
I has the privilege of working with the scientists and experts from all the institutions as well as Angela Morelli and getting this important information out there in an accessible and visual way.
Here are a selection of the graphics from the report.
Many thanks for all the comments on social media about the graphics, including my favourite comment 😉
“If you are the one who designed the graphics used today in the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report launch then kudos for creating clear and compelling visual teaching tools”
For the past couple of years, I have been looking back on a monthly basis at graphics that I produced whilst at New Scientist 10 years ago. I have had fun commenting on the good, bad and indifferent things that I find in the graphics. From colours and styles as well as the technology. I have decided to change this monthly look back to a quarterly review. I did this first over the summer – link here – and think a quarterly look back will allow me to pick some howlers and well as -hopefully- showcase some stunners!
The next one will cover July, August and September 2012 and will be the autumn round-up…due end of September.
Thank you to all that have looked in the past and I hope that you carry on enjoying the round-up on a less frequent basis.
It has been a while, but I am pleased to say that an essay that I contributed to (Climate change communications and the IPCC) along with a few colleagues at the IPCC, has just been published in the Journal Climate Change. One of a series of papers and essays looking at science communication – Climate Change Communication and the IPCC. A really important subject…
From the abstract… ‘In its Sixth Assessment Report Cycle (AR6), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aims to strengthen the communication of its products. As the only mandatory part of IPCC reports specifically targeting a lay audience, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) provide an opportunity for broader communication of key IPCC topics…
…we find that bringing together IPCC authors and communication specialists to jointly develop the text and graphics increases the accessibility and usefulness of the FAQs…
…we recommend involving communication experts from the beginning of the drafting process to share responsibility, which requires sufficient resources to be allocated to the FAQs…
Enjoy reading along with the other papers and essays all looking at science communication. The report and all 32 FAQ graphics is here…
Many thanks to Sarah Connors, Sophie Berger, Malissa Walsh, Ros Pidcock and Maike Nicolai for putting up with all my questions and queries when producing the FAQs for the report.
A new report from Greenpeace science unit was launched recently looking at how a rusting oil tanker, the FSO Safer, could end up triggering a major environmental and humanitarian disaster in and around the Red Sea.
I produced the infographics in collaboration with Greenpeace and Kathryn Millar, an environmental researcher. You can find the report here…
Some recent work, working with Shaoni Bhattacharya and the medical experts at Birmingham Health Partners Centre for Regulatory Science and Innovation. Looking at medicines in pregnancy.
Last week I posted a link to a project that I completed last year, working in collaboration with EMCDDA and Europol – the EU Drug Markets Report 2019.
I posted it because the particular graphic that I show in the preview was one of those projects that really changed along the way from initial idea and sketch to the final look. It was a challenging project and one that I sometimes use as an example of the process in my workshops.See the report here.
A comment from Andrew Cunningham (EMCDDA staff), one of the contributors to the report made me think that showing the progression of the design would be interesting for viewers, so here goes.
To put this spread into context, each chapter of the Drug Markets Report concentrates on one drug or range of drugs, so we have Cannabis, Heroin, Cocaine, Synthetics (MDMA, Amphetamine, Methamphetamine) and NPS (New Psychoactive Substances) Each chapter has a main spread graphic, along with its chapter colour, summing up the particular drug and looking at its sources, distribution, price, purity etc around the world as well as across Europe.
We tried to keep to the same format for each drug graphic so that the reader would know what was being shown in each position.There is a central image surrounded by many data graphics – generally world data on the right and EU data on the left page. I have included the other drug spreads here so you can see what I mean.
With NPS we have a range of drugs that cover many of the other drug categories but in man-made chemical form, so the way the data was collected and needed to be presented was very different. Trying to keep up with the new (sometimes very similar) chemical formulas and drugs is a major task. In our initial discussions the huge number of drugs recorded and monitored by the EU early warning system seemed to be very important and we agreed that this was something that should be shown. For instance in the last year of reporting – 2018 – there were approximately 52 drugs monitored and reported out of a total of about 731 (numbers were not 100% accurate as this stage) reported since 2003 – an interesting thing to visualise as we could also show how many of each category were being monitored. Here are some of the trials showing the 731 drugs and the breakdown of what types they were.
I thought if I use each drug as a dot and make it into a hexagon shape, being of significance in the chemistry of the NPS (benzine ring) that would be a great way to show just how many had been monitored in that time and the proportion that had been reported in the last year. Maybe we could have that as out main image and hang the other data off of that.
Luckily the total number of dots fits quite happily into that hex shape (well almost) and so I tried to lay out some of the remaining data along the same lines as the other spreads.
I was hoping that we could pull out and highlight some examples of the drugs over the years to help put them into context for the more general reader, ie where was ‘spice’ and when was it notified and what are the data for that etc so I added some dummy copy boxes over the 700 dots.
You can see here that the layout is six column double page spread.
As with most projects, discussions between colleagues and myself are an ongoing and vital part of the process. Elements are changed, colours are altered and layouts adjusted…
During some of these discussions it was agreed that the number of seizure cases was really the important piece of information – or it was at least as important as the numbers of the drugs – and so we decided that this should be primary focus of the spread.
I had the data in a small graphic at the top right hand side and so I redesigned the spread using that information as the focus, now hanging the other data, including the dots, from that. The number of drugs was still an important piece of data and so I tried to incorporate that into the new design using 732 dots arranged in different way, firstly in a row…
…then using my preferred hex shape once again. You can see here I tried other chart types including the histogram like chart but we agreed on the area/line chart in simple colours with the hexagon (700+ dots) as a secondary visual although near to the top of the page so that the reader would see the huge numbers before seeing the quantities.
Once we had agreed on the look, it was then time to refine the main chart to add EU and EU+2 data (light and dark blue) plus add the additional information such as highlighting certain drugs and chemicalcategories as well as other relevant or interesting information. You can see I had started to do this above and below.
The key for the 731 NPS dots was a real problem and that particular element went through many stages to try and get it into a state that was acceptable to everybody and understandable to the reader.
Then it was really down to refinement and adjusting text, layout, positioning, white space and incorporating and editing the new data when we got it until we end up at the final version.
Keeping everybody involved (and sometimes not involved!) updated with the process and what was going on was a big job, but luckily at that stage I could spend time in EMCDDA’s office which made the process much smoother.
Making sure everybody involved was happy with the information shown, the text and the placement of the visuals is always a big job and these spreads were no exception.
We got there in the end and I and, hopefully, the team at EMCDDA are happy with the results. Working with a big team is always an involved, complex and sometimes frustrating experience – for them as much as me – but knowing the data and subject matter (they are the experts here), knowing the audience and knowing the reasons for producing the visuals is a vital part of the job and hopefully this knowledge will guide you to a good result.
This happens with every chart and graphic I produce, from the most basic to the complex. Some have more steps and processes, including lots of pencil sketches (which have gone missing here) some less, the process is the same.
These were just some of the graphics produced for the report. There are many more in the report including timelines, drug processes and more icon-like graphics, so head over to the site and download last years and this years report amongst many more.
A big thank you to Rosemary Martin de Sousa (Head of unit), Andrew Cunningham (who’s idea it was to post this) and everybody involved at EMCDDA and Europol – a real team effort.
Just a quick post to put all the IPCC 1.5 report graphics that I completed all in one place for quick access…I have the pleasure of working on the graphics for the next report as I type this…
A couple of before and after for icons that I worked on for ‘The Good Ancestor: How to think long term in a short-term world’ by Roman Krznaric, launched this week.
Showing the ideas that were sketched out after discussions and brainstorming between Roman and myself.
Always good to see how things develop and finalise at the final stage. More to come…
My latest infographic for Scientific American has been released and this month they are making the issue free to read. Go to https://lnkd.in/gVMCHtz to see my graphic looking at Planet Hunting. Always a pleasure to work with Jen Christiansen and Meredith MacGregor.
This month I thought I would share the video of the sketching process I went through after I had read the copy, re-read the copy, doodled and taken notes, finally asking many questions to Jen and Meredith. At that stage I was pretty certain about what we were all trying to achieve in the graphic.
The graphic and video are below. These show my sketching process and build up to the ‘final sketch before committing to the final drawing completed in Illustrator.
