I was driving home with my wife yesterday and the sheer metrics of the swine flu “pandemic” hit me in a way that rarely hits anyone living outside the world of graphic design: as an info-graphic. Sadly, today’s comic — while accurate to my rounded mathematic calculations and official projected U.S. population — only visually demonstrates 1/384th of our total population. Bandwidth and Photoshop’s ridiculous limitation to 600,000 pixels prevented me from drilling this thing out to an actual comparison.
As it stands we’re at about 6,000 pixels tall today, so imagine this chart 100 times taller, then understand that would require more than 500,000 more pixels to finish the chart off properly. In other words: it would be a very, very big chart.
At screen resolution, 72 dpi, the chart would be almost 15,000 inches tall, which is equal to 1,250 feet, filled with all green “people” and one pink “pig.”
For your easy comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall. So soak that in for a second before you start canceling your lunch plans.
Nate Voss: 
Honey Bee Invites: 
Neenah Paper: 
36 Point: 
Jeff Fisher: 
Nate Voss is a designer, illustrator, talkshow host and design journalist. Working in Omaha since 2001, Nate served four years on the Board of Directors for 
Donovan oversees all creative development at
I’m not going to lie; I Laughed Out Loud on scrolling down this comic
(did someone learn that from my portfolio website method ;-P)
i dig it.
ditto to both
If only cable news dared to be this succinct about the (hush) “pandemic.” Good stuff.
This is awesome. I think I’ll send this to my closest friends and family as a chain letter, like they did for me with their stupid swine flu warnings.
Thanks again!
Ha Ha Ha. This reminds me of the report I saw on CNN yesterday that talked about the media blowing the swine flu thing out of proportion.
The funny part is that it came right after Wolf Blitzer promised that CNN is tracking the “pandemic” and will be bringing us live, up-to-the-minute coverage.
Oi.