I decided I wanted to base my plane outcomes on a statistic. I really struggled for quite a while to find a statistic that I could create a visual to relate it to.
Researching deaths from cocaine, I found a positive correlation in the statistics that I thought could lead to an interesting visual outcome.
| 2016 | 371 deaths |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 432 deaths |
| 2018 | 637 deaths |
| 2029 | 708 deaths |
| 2020 | 840 deaths |
I would have preferred to have based it off of local North of Ireland statistics but unfortunately I could not source 5 consecutive years of them. I thought of using plane in a way to represent this increase in deaths.
I took inspiration from bags of cocaine. My thinking was that it is a widely known image and one easily represented through planes. In the set of five designs, I thought one design could represent each year and the number of deaths could equate to the size of the plane / amount of cocaine in each bag.
When converting this to Figma, I could that giving each death one pixel was too large for the frame I was working on. So I designed a system that one death was the equivalent of two pixels.
| 2016 | 371 deaths | 185.5px |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 432 deaths | 216px |
| 2018 | 637 deaths | 318.5px |
| 2019 | 708 deaths | 354px |
| 2020 | 840 deaths | 420px |
I was delighted with the outcome of these designs. I felt that the planes were very recognisable as bags of cocaine. The positive correlation of the statistic also is quite poignant when laid out in a data-visualisation form as the continuous increase makes it clear that this is an ongoing issue which will continue to get worse. The light-grey of the planes representing the bag is also successful in conveying the transparency of the plastic.