For DES240 (Designing with Data) assignment 1, we are retired to create a black and white GIF to show a set of data that is related to goals from the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals site.
I started looking into the goal 'Gender Inequality' first. Because I am quite interested in these sort of topics and I do not think any of our classes have tried looking into this topic.
However, looking more into the statistics, I started to shift my thoughts and I thought I should do something that I am more familiar with.
I studied Geography during high school and I reckon it would be easier for me to do something related to Climate Action.
Thinking about climate problems, I thought about deforestation. And this is the statistics that I found, and that I'm interested in further developing.
From 2002 to 2020, there was a total of 64.7Mha humid primary forest lost globally, making up 16% of its total tree cover loss in the same time period. Total area of humid primary forest decreased globally by 6.3% in this time period.
From 2001 to 2020, New Zealand lost 1.29Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 11% decrease in tree cover since 2000.
One is more global and one focuses more on New Zealand.
Because most of the time we are more focused on New Zealand, which makes me make up my mind and do the one that's focused on New Zealand.
figure(1) & (2)
(1) I thought it would be cool to have all sizes of triangles. However, to make them look like that is not easy. Which I quickly eliminated this option.
(2) I like this idea. However, I would want to keep triangles to represent the trees. I knew circles would be easier but I do not want to keep it too simple.
I used the methods we learnt during class to try create a whole page of triangles. But it didn't work as the way I thought.
This is what it looks like after I tried typing those kind of codes. They apparently did not work. After going through some online videos, I still have no idea how to get it work. Which then I got help from an engineering friend and we figured out how to do it together.
This is how it first look like after I adapt the for loop and the things we learnt from this quiz. I wanted the lines to just block 11 trees to represent the 11% of tree lost.
After I asked for comments from friends. They suggested me to change the lines into a word of 11% to show the data more obviously. At the same time I can still keep blocking the 11 trees as I want.
This is what we tried. And then I sent them onto discord to ask for some advice. Which I found out we cannot use greyish colour but only black and white.
This is how it finally looks.
Things that I can improve on:
I wanted to spin the triangles in order to create more movement
Create more triangles so that the word 11 and the symbol % can look more detailed
Statement of Intent
'From 2001 to 2020, New Zealand lost 1.29Mha of tree cover, equivalent to an 11% decrease in tree cover since 2000.'
The above statement is what I am trying to show through this GIF.
The reason I chose climate problems as my theme for development is that I have studied Geography before, and this is a topic that I am more familiar with. This can help me develop my ideas easier. The reason that makes me choose to further look into the problem of deforestation is that I feel like it is easier to visualize.
I want to show it in a simple way due to two reasons.
It's because showing the data itself together will make it easy to understand.
This makes it easier to code for me when I am very new to coding.