2020 Year in Review: The impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts
Branding / Text / Data Visualization for the World Bank Group
Please click here to access the project on the World Bank Group's website.
Since at least 2014, the World Bank Group has published an annual Year in Review each December, illustrating the biggest trends in international development, economics and finance over the preceding 12 months. These posts are among the most anticipated and popular of the year.
In 2019, I assisted with the branding for that year's article, with a view towards creating a look that could be used for the series going forward. I wished to give the series a look that could be used year after year, and make the series instantly identifiable.
I developed a simple identity for the 2019 article, with a view towards it being used for the series going forward.
My goal was to get away from using a collage of screenshots of the graphs themselves in the branding (feeling that was convoluted and too on the nose). Instead I wanted to develop something clean and timeless. Another key goal was to develop a look that was relatively neutral in tone, as the underlying data, graphs, and narrative could vary between years and within years. In other words, the look needed to not seem flippant when paired with bad news nor overly hum-drum when paired with positive news.
With the guidance of a few senior colleagues, I came up with a box-based theme that could be overlaid on an image with a clean, neutral effect. Given that this post, and the series as a whole, provides an overview of the biggest global economic trends, I decided to pair the design with an image of earth from space.
Header image with new branding for the 2019 World Bank Group Year in Review.
In 2020, I took on a much more significant role with the Year in Review project – in a year unlike any covered by this project before it – coordinating, writing, as well as designing and producing multimedia for the whole project.
I worked with Divyanshi Wadhwa, who created the 12 charts in Flourish – a change from previous years. Beyond the great visualizations it makes, the platform is super useful to multimedia producers like myself, as it allows users to export SVG files of the visualizations. Though, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that these exports are far from perfect and some templates are more successful than others.
This post is still being written.
