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Design process Photo shoot

A photo shoot with Chris de Bode in Geneva

LSi’s design team just had the pleasure of working with award-winning photographer Chris de Bode for a two-day photo shoot at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Twelve years ago, we had worked with compelling images produced by Chris to make them a centerpiece of the design for WHO’s report Preventing chronic diseases: a vital investment. A compendium of images, data, and analysis, this publication profoundly altered public health approaches to non-communicables diseases (NCDs) and led to the first-ever United Nations high-level meeting on noncommunicable disease prevention and control in September 2011. Only the AIDS epidemic had, in the past, warranted such an international commitment. And it can be traced back to the leadership and vision of global public health legend Robert Beaglehole who entrusted the production of the report to JoAnne Epping-Jordan. We would claim, of course, that its design made a small but significant contribution to its impact.

When faced with a brief for portraits to illustrate the call to eradicate hepatitis, we immediately thought of Chris. Or, rather, of his images, still vivid in our minds over a decade later. After digging up a series of posters we designed to feature his photography in The Lancet, we shot off an e-mail. He responded almost immediately, and landed in Geneva less than a week later.

You can check out Chris’s latest project One Meal a Day online and in a new, giant public exhibit in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Chris de Bode at the World Health Organization photo shoot (Reda Sadki/LSi)
Chris de Bode at the World Health Organization photo shoot (Reda Sadki/LSi)
Chris de Bode at the World Health Organization photo shoot (Reda Sadki/LSi)
Chris de Bode at the World Health Organization photo shoot (Reda Sadki/LSi)

 

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Design process Design samples Infographics and data visualization

How to design an infographic to show complex economic relationships

“I have been designing infographics since before folks called them infographics,” smugly declares LSi‘s Claude Cardot, who now leads the designisgood.info team. “You know Pixar’s Inside Out where different emotions are embodied by miniature people living in a little girl’s brain? It is as if Claude has his very own Edward Tufte in his,” joked a client recently.

Inside Out: imagine Claude Cardot's brain

Many infographics try to say too much, with so much going on at the same time, on the same page, that one can get dizzy just trying to decipher what is being said. Claude boils down complexity and extracts the most valuable essence of what needs to be said visually, using a simple but compelling visual style.

On his most recent project with CitiesAlliance, a global partnership for urban poverty reduction and the promotion of the role of cities in sustainable development, Claude had to start with over 500 words of text detailing the complex relationships between equity, economic growth, equitable access to public goods and services in an urban context.

In record time, the productive dialogue with our partner’s technical specialists had boiled down to two key messages supported by a set of key data points.

The infographic was then printed as a large roll-up (5 x 1 meters) and used throughout CitiesAlliance digital and print publications.

Infographic showing visually the complex economic relationships involved
Infographic showing visually the complex economic relationships involved