Some Perspective on the Economy
Even more so than history, the economy and the concepts related to it can become so abstract that it’s difficult to navigate through a lot of what many experts are talking about. The vocabulary itself creates a gulf between what an ordinary person might understand and what is actually going on. Not to mention all the complexity tied up in the various institutions, forms, and graphs. Yet, at the same time it’s something that fundamentally touches each and every person to some degree.
Throughout different discussions about the economy, bailout plans, and national debt, it’s difficult to really understand what these large numbers mean. What does $700 billion dollars look like? What does it feel like? At a certain point it becomes so abstract that it just seems like people pulling numbers out of a hat and using a calculator to solve all the world’s problems.
That’s why I think financial concepts are always ripe for some good design work, and why I was especially interested in a recent poster by GOOD:
(via GOOD)
I think it’s wonderful that they combined a bunch of layers of information. What’s great about it is that you quickly get a sense of what happened by looking at the main components: the timeline and the increasing debt, but over time you can keep digging and reading the various nuggets of information that are at more of a micro level.
