BLACKOUT 2003
International Institute of Information Design Award 2020 (IIIDaward 2020)
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
2020 Print
Collaborated with Lela Johnson
On August 14, 2003, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, hundreds of cities across the midwest and northeast went dark as the United States experienced the worst blackout in its history. Buildings, subways, elevators were evacuated, computers and electric billboards blinked off, airports were disrupted, air conditioners and fans halted amidst the summer heat, and news agencies scrambled to cover the story and uncover just what had happened and who—or what—was to blame.
Over the course of months, the story grew more complex as more nuanced aspects of the blackout emerged. We all became armchair experts on the fragmentation of the power grid, real versus reactive power, and the interconnectedness of US/Canadian electricity. And what better way to learn about these macro-concepts, than to analyze one material moment, one traceable chain of human and machine events that reveals the totality of the state of electricity in North America.
20”x32”
We went through four major iterations.
Version 1
The first draft is always hard. After reading hundreds of pages regarding this event, we came up with this draft. It’s impossible to describe the event from all perspectives, so we decided to only include important factors. For a more straightforward organization, we separated two parts — cause and consequence.
Version 2
For this version, we added a little more information to better represent this incident. Furthermore, we refined the map on the top. Specifically, I traced all the main power lines across the east coast and Ontario, which helped us to better depict the context of this disaster.
Version 3
After receiving feedback from our advisor, we realized that we didn’t have a strong storytelling component. This was because we separated the cause and the result of the events. However, for that complex situation, you couldn’t really separate them because the cause and result are intertwined. Therefore, we merged them and created this new version.
Version 4
This is the final version of our design. Compare to the previous one, we focused on the details and tried to make it as perfect as possible. We also added a new illustration to explain the science behind the event. In fact, it was a challenge for us to summarize something that we were not familiar with into graphics. In the end, we had to conduct a lot of research to have a basic understanding to create the illustration.
Poster Details
Illustration
Main Map
Small Maps
Info Graphics
Looking back...
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to do a poster. Maybe you want to design a book cover. Or maybe you are visualizing an event. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story can make all the difference. Before working on this project, I always thought that data visualization must be something fancy and techie. Nevertheless, after actually doing it, I realize that it is nothing different than any other design projects that I have worked on: they were all about storytelling. A good designer must be a good storyteller.