Mid-Atlantic Land Cover Infographic - NOAA OCM

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This is the story of land use change over a span of ten years. When I started the piece, I had an idea about what I wanted to say, and I knew what I wanted the audience to get out of it. I realized as I was reviewing early iterations, that the ideas/concepts were so much more powerful when the audience drew their own conclusions about the data. I based this piece on that idea, and hopefully get the conversation going these important issues.

This infographic represents land cover change of the Mid-Atlantic from 1996-2006, compiled in 2014 by NOAA Office for Coastal Management for a congressional land use report. Each little rectangular unit represents a 1% piece of the 85,000 sq miles that make up portions of Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The data reveals that the forest and wetland regions are losing ground to development, agriculture, grassland, scrub/shrub, and barren land use categories.

Here is the first free draw/concept of the landcover infographic, the idea was to show land use change over time in the different regions of the US. The data we were using was collected from 1996-2006, a ten year span that was to be processed and ready for comparisson with the data currently being compiled for 2006-2016. The project included finishing five separate graphics. Here is a look at the first one I tackled; the Mid-Atlantic.

I did a quick 3D comp in Maya for previs. I wanted to get other elements into the mix and it really felt like the idea was coming together, but after a few reviews this version had its visual limitations. I liked the idea, but needed to step back a bit. I decided to change the medium, maybe I'd have more luck in an illustration.

I went back to the original idea in PS, and started to block in the different regions based onthe data of land change: Forest, wetlands, devlopment, agriculture, open ocean, grasslands, scrub/shrub, and barren.