Hurricanes Kill People for Years after the Initial Disaster
Project Category
Client
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Project Brief
Objective: This project involves redesigning graphics from a research paper on tropical cyclones for publication in Scientific American, ensuring they are visually engaging and conform to the magazine's style while preserving data integrity.
Scope: Evaluating the original graphics, applying Scientific American's visual standards through design iterations, and collaborating with editors for feedback within a tight three-business-day timeline due to embargo restrictions.
Team: I suggested which graphics would be most interesting to show in the SciAm article, accessed and analyzed the data (finding an error in the uploaded data in the process), remade and restylized the charts. Andrea Thompson wrote the SciAm article.
Data: Open access data provided by the authors.
Links:
This was my first time (re)making figures for an embargoed article. Embargoed articles are those that are scheduled for release by journals at a specific date and time—news outlets are not allowed to publish articles on this research until the embargo date. This is usually done for articles that the authors or journals think or hope will be high-impact and newsworthy.
Normally we receive news of embargoed articles about a week in advance, which means we have exactly that amount of time to write the article and prepare any accompanying graphics. This 'week in advance' included the weekend, unfortunately, so I really only had three days: Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. Additionally, there was some data issues I had to wait for the author to respond to before I could move forward with the first graphic. And just to add to the difficulty, I also fell under the weather that weekend.
Those were some long days, and I'm incredibly glad I took on the challenge of making graphics for an embargoed article three and half months into the internship and not sooner. At this point, I had the process of creating graphics and going through copy down, and I had the confidence to make most of the design decisions myself without relying on constant or frequent input from the editors. Had I attempted to do this earlier in the internship, I probably would have needed to tap out and ask Amanda to help.
So, not only are these graphics beautiful and visually interesting, but they are a testament to how much I've grown in the internship so far and I'm beyond proud of them. I talk about the creation process of these graphics in a blog, so be sure to check it out!
Desktop Graphics

