By Jane Sun on June, 2017

A data visualisation exploring how to make extreme numerical scales comprehensible to a general audience — specifically, how to represent figures so large that they lose meaning without a strong visual anchor.

The subject is the U.S. government deficit, compared against the aggregate personal debt of American citizens. Red was chosen to signal financial abnormality; green references the colour of the U.S. dollar. The initial draft used a mountain as the scale metaphor, but this was replaced with the Washington Monument — a more culturally specific landmark that ties the statistic directly to the federal government and American identity. The revision made the illustration more precise in both meaning and tone.