Initiatives Addressing the Past in Lebanon
Infographic poster and brochure for Lebanon Support
Beirut, Lebanon
2018
Beirut, Lebanon
2018
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In attempts to heal the victims of Lebanon's 25-year civil war, 156 initiatives were launched by local and international NGOs, collectives, individuals, the local government, political parties and research institutions. Lebanon Support compiled an interactive database that gathered and categorized all these initiatives under three main objectives: Truth-Seeking and Right to Know, Justice and Non-Recurrence, and Reparation. The database is very rich with many possibilities to disaggregate the data. Lebanon Support commissioned me to design a quantitative infographic in both English and Arabic that would be distributed as a poster and as a brochure.
The qualitative part
Research findings: As I knew the infographic was going to be dominated by charts and numbers, I wanted to avoid objectifying and losing the emotional and human aspect of the subject matter. Accordingly, I decided to create an illustration set that would serve as context to the qualitative data. After reading through the descriptions of all 156 initiatives, I got a much better understanding of the traumas they were addressing, and I was able to focus my visual research, which is documented in the moodboard below.
The illustration: The illustration had to be handled delicately as it straddled the fine line between a violent and depressing past and a hopeful attempt at reconciliation. It became a matter of composition and deciding what to scale down (the bloody past) and what to emphasize (the initiatives). The elements of the illustration were also divided into three bands that represented the three objectives of the initiatives and that were colour-coded. Due to format restrictions, the illustration was incorporated into the data visualization in the poster while it serves as the cover in the brochure.
The quantitative part
Analyzing the data: I was given a raw Excel file with 13 data groups. Although all of the data groups were extremely interesting and informative on many levels, I had to narrow them down to a few that would relate a coherent and engaging narrative for the infographic. After doing some very basic data visualization, I ended up with 5 groups that told the following narrative:
• WHY were these initiatives launched? (Objectives)
• WHAT were the initiatives? (Approaches)
• HOW were the initiatives carried out? (Activities)
• WHEN were the initiatives launched? (Year of launch)
• WHO did the initiatives target? (Main target group)
Visualizing the data: The 5 groups of data were laid out so that the narrative flowed continuously from one to another using the help of colour coding, placement, a sankey diagram, disaggregating the timeline by activity, and using connecting lines to link the data for the activities with the data for the main target groups. This gives the viewer the ability to read the infographic in multiple ways: they can choose to focus on one objective throughout the infographic one day or to read into two connected data groups on another day. They are provided with legends to continuously remind them of the colour coding established in the objectives.
