Breathtaking is a unique approach to data visualization showing the air quality
of "breathtaking Lahore" during the year 2022.
of "breathtaking Lahore" during the year 2022.
Design Brief: Choose three data sets and inform the audience with the data using appropriate media for the appropriate target audience.
Target Audience: People in Lahore
Intention: To inform people about climate crisis in Lahore which has been ranked as one of the most polluted cities in the world. The air pollution in Lahore feels as if someone is taking your right to breathe. You can see and feel it in your throat.
Logo Design: The idea came from secondary research where someone described living in Lahore as if someone is taking your basic right to breathe. Lahore being a cultural capital of Pakistan has been presented as the "breath-taking city" to inform the audience and authorities to take action against climate crisis.
Title Intro: I used multiple pictures of Lahore and its monument Badshahi Masjid and created this title to show the audience how it actually feels and seen to live in Lahore during winters.
Media Choice: I used cigarette packaging as a cover for my flipbook because breathing in Lahore is as dangerous for your lungs as smoking.
Data Set 1: My first data set talks about the reduction in average life expectancy of 4-5 years by living in Lahore. I added that as a caution just like how cigarette packages have disclaimers.
Data Set 2: Number of days the air quality was dangerous for the residents of Lahore categorized into sensitive group, women and children and healthy groups.
Important Question
How many days Lahore has healthy air quality in a year?
How many days Lahore has healthy air quality in a year?
NONE!
Choice of second media: Instead of showing numbers and graphs of air quality, I wanted to humanize the data. My approach was to target audience's sight. So, I came up with the idea of using a flipbook to show a progression of weekly air quality for 2022.
Humans don't understand numbers, we understand visuals.
Data set: For each weekly AQI, I used single picture of the famous monument in Lahore, Badshahi Mosque and showed how bad air quality is creating haziness, blurriness and particulate matters.
Insights: During winters starting from Oct and continuing till March, the air quality is highly dangerous and the visibility of the image is bad.
Computer animated flipbook design visualizing Lahore for each week's average air quality.
The process: For flipbook pages, I used matte photopaper and printed images using inject printers. Cut them and made them into a flipbook using perfect binding. Flipbook cover was made with canvas paper to feel the rough texture of the paper and add to the experience of the audience.
