MAGCD Symposium
Visuals on critical topics like environmental harm often fail to connect with audiences. Abstract presentations of complex data can make the issue feel distant, turning viewers into passive observers instead of active participants.
So I was trying to find ways to make data visible and relatable I came across a book called Speculative Everything, Authors suggest that Using design as a form of critique is just one use for design, as is communication or problem-solving. They believe that some design should always question prevailing values and their underlying assumptions and that this activity can sit beside mainstream design rather than replace it.
After reading it I tried to think critically and aim to create data visuals that have a relatable and tangible presence.
As an example, I took a piece of fact, which is
The hidden water footprint of a Big Mac menu,
Rather than measuring a product’s water footprint in liters, I did some math and translated the units into a visually recognizable object:
a bathtub full of water
What I figured out with this exercise is reframing the number with something that is easy to visualize can create a stronger sense of the environmental effect.
Other everyday items reveal similarly impactful figures.
When viewed this way, these figures no longer feel like distant abstractions; they become tangible representations of the hidden environmental cost.
This approach highlights the idea of ecological debt.
As Weintrobe suggests in her book Engaging with Climate Change,
Ecological debt offers a way to see who uses what natural resources and who owes a debt to whom. These debts can be owed to other people, species, future generations, and the global commons.
There was an immersive art installation by Michael Pinsky called Pollution Pods, which consists of five interconnected domes, each replicating the air in cities like London, New Delhi, São Paulo, and Beijing. The project perfectly combines scientific data with visual and sensible exhibitions to help visitors experience the actual damages of our ecological debt.
My main inspiration was a short film “The Powers of Ten”, by Charles and Ray Eames, their approach uses scale changes to unlock new perspectives. First expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is explored, then reducing inward until to a single atom.
Such shifts in the scale inspired me to zoom out.
The biggest ecological debt today comes from carbon emissions.
These are gases released when we:
/ burn things to produce energy,
/ cut down large numbers of trees, or
/ produce too many products.
These gases trap heat around the Earth, warming the planet and causing climate change.
In 2022, human activity generated 53.7 billion tonnes of carbon emissions. This amount is so vast that it can feel incomprehensible. Intellectually, one might understand that a billion has three more zeros than a million, and a million has three more zeros than a thousand. While the concept of the zeros is clear, truly visualizing or relating to this number on a personal level is very challenging.
So while I was trying to find ways to visualize billions of tonnes of carbon in my mind…
…I thought what if I use the smallest unit in digital graphic design:
A pixel (1×1 px) is the smallest storyteller, carrying color, shape, and emotion in its tiny frame. So a pixel is actually smaller than this red box, I enlarged it to make it visible on the screen.
I represented 1 tonne of carbon with 1 red pixel. Then I asked:
If one red pixel on an A4 sheet represents one tonne of carbon, how many A4 sheets would it take to represent the entire world’s carbon emissions—53.7 billion tonnes?
To find that I needed to know the maximum number of pixels that can fit into an A4.
I found out that in a 300 PPI (pixel per inch) print, you could print eight million pixels in a single A4.
Using this information, the total global carbon emissions translated into 6,563 A4 pages, each completely filled with red pixels. I created a full-scale mockup of this “red book” and named it:
“The Carbon Book“
It’s a thick book with a height of 32 centimeters, equivalent in length to five English editions of Les Misérables.
The Carbon Book inspired me to dissect it and create mockups representing each country’s individual contributions to the “carbon book” on an accurate scale. Each country is assigned a specific number of pages, reflecting its share of global emissions.
This visualization highlighted how “carbon debts,” represented by pixels, are linked to both consumption and population size.
I then zoomed in, focusing on the pixels representing an average individual in each country. Using A4 paper as a reference, I connected this perspective back to the Carbon Book.
Each person’s lifestyle creates different levels of ecological debt. For example, an average person in Qatar generates 67 pixels a year, while someone in China produces 11 pixels.
This revealed the huge inequality in emissions—some leave barely a trace, like the single pixel for someone in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while others, often due to higher consumption or wealth, leave a far larger footprint.
Like Elon Musk’s two private jets emitted over 2,000 pixels in a year, overshadowing entire communities.
This huge contrast highlights unequal responsibility for the climate crisis and raises questions about creating a fair, sustainable future.
I concluded my experiment by calculating my own pixels, and you can do the same by visiting the WWF’s Footprint Calculator https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/
My result was 9.9 tonnes of carbon emissions—equivalent to 9.9 pixels in The Carbon Book.
These are the pixels I “own” in the carbon book.
Through this exercise, I was able to visually represent my individual contributions to the collective damage we create each year. Seeing my footprint laid out in this tangible way made the abstract numbers feel much more personal and meaningful.
In the end, I realized that Reframing can make abstract data more relatable, and clarify the scale of both personal and collective impact.
Visualizing scale could allow us to move back and forth between personal and global views, and help us understand where our actions fit within the larger environmental picture.
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November 2024