Why GDP does not buy happiness

February 2023

Project description

The 2023 World Data Visualization Prize (organized by the World Government Summit in collaboration with Information is Beautiful) is a creative challenge in which information designers across the world are prompted to design a data visualization relevant to one of three themes.

This is my submission for the theme “What just happened?”. A dataset was received as part of the challenge, but most of my data comes directly from the Happy Planet Index public dataset.

The charts were prototyped with RAWGraphs and Flourish, and the overall visualization was realized using Adobe Illustrator.

Process

1. Data preparation – Explore the data that was provided and look for external sources of data. Create different granularity options by means of new variables. Identify relevant statistics for the final product. This was all done in Excel.
2. Prototyping & feedback gathering – Statistics are visualized through different charts, shapes, levels of granularity in Excel, RAWGraphs, Flourish and Adobe Illustrator.
3. Data visualization – The chosen charts are pieced together following a common visual alphabet. The text guides the reader through the visual, pulls the data together and tells the story.