The World of 100: Our Global Village
The real minority report, or what the world would look like if it were a village of 100.
From data visualization to infographics, we’re big on the power of smart graphic design to covey big concepts that are otherwise hard to grasp in their raw numberness. Which is why we love designer Toby Ng’s poster series The World of 100 — an experimental graphical representation of statistical information about the world, based on the allegorical scenario of reducing the world to a village of 100 people.
The series is pure design crispness — simple vectors make the shapes clean enough to make their point, with vibrant, solid colors making those points all the more visceral and impactful.
In a weird way, we were the most shocked by the least consequential ones, our daily entitlements that we take for granted — somehow, PSA’s and the general sense of social responsibility have made most of us aware of severe problems like hunger, deadly disease, and the lack of clean drinking water. But computers? Not something we’d given much thought to, and yet:
We wish we could show you the actual posters — some of the web images are too small to read the text, which is a pity as the information is nothing short of humbling. For instance, in our proverbial village of 100:
48 can’t speak, act according to their faith and conscience due to harassment, imprisonment, torture or death.
And some of it, although common knowledge, makes some of our societal ironies particularly salient. Like the notion of “minorities” — in public policy, in employment recruiting, in education quotas. It’s never been this evident that the ratios of power are not contingent upon the ratios of numbers.
Check out all 20 posters here. And enjoy that computer of yours — the other 93 villagers can’t.
- Visualization of Global Bottled Water Consumption A visualization of bottled water consumption by geographic area....
- In-Formed: Physical Objects as Data Visualization Part data visualization, part industrial design, part social awareness – designer Nadeem Haidary's project exposes little-known facts designed to effect actual behavioral change by inspiring us to be a bit less wasteful....
- Jonathan Harris: World Building in a Crazy World 15 short vignettes, full of simple yet philosophical reflection on the current state of the digital world, wrapped in a vision for our shared future. ...
- Ed Emberley’s Make a World: The Film An independent documentary about the life and magic of iconic illustrator Ed Emberley, whose 1972 book Make a World shaped the visual culture of an entire generation...
- Kopernik: Crowdfunding World-Changing Design Revolutionary new social platform connects breakthrough technologies with those whose lives they will better the most, harnessing the power of crowdsourced microfunding....
cool posters, I will buy them and use ‘em in my meeting room!
Once again, a great post with both artistic and clever content. I wish I could see those posters everywhere on the street, so that more people could think about this world. Thank you!
being anal, I checked the accuracy of the illustration with the figures given (I used the lightbulb eg – 76 and 24 about 3:1) and it was inaccurate – could fit about 4 of the black areas in the yellow bulb area (4:1). just that I would have liked it to be more accurate.
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