1PT.Rule Comic: Hog-Wild for Design? Pigs for Information? I dunno… “Swine Flu.”

by on May 4, 2009 at 9:39 am

1PT.Rule Comic: Hog-Wild for Design? Pigs for Information? I dunno… “Swine Flu.”
Posted on May 4, 2009 by Nate Voss
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.