How Big A, really? A new way to think About The News (NPR)

Scale is a delicate thing when you read the news.

Take a breathtaking event, such as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, first visit to the moon. Think landing, walking, rock collection, posted the American flag photo, making all of this. This is the greatest story of my life.

Now take the same story in detail and it draw a card. Changes in scale.

 

He comes across Neil NASA and live version, went on the surface of the Moon in 1969. The lunar landing vehicle, LM marked on the map is at the Centre. You can click on and around to look at the details. But the amazing thing there.

When you superimpose a soccer on top of the map of NASA field, it turns Armstrong and Aldrin - any time they were there - crossed just 90 yards Moon! What Neil calls "a giant step for mankind" is enough giant as it seemed. The trip was a "leap" certainly, a fantastic feat, but early explorers of the Moon explored an astonishing small area.

Or, for a more American Metaphor…

If you are not that familiar soccer, NASA, Frank Jacobs and maps Strange people overlap of this baseball diamond. As you can see, the market longer, more daring Armstrong led on as Joe DiMaggio used for each round of jogging - plate on the mid-center field. It's like walking on a block of entrance door of your hotel. Who knows?

When we read stories, we often lack a sense of scale. We read about oil spills, we talk about disaster in Pakistan and we have a vague idea of what worked, but we often wonder "How big was, really? Now, I'm happy to say, there is a website that addresses this issue.

Designed by the BBC, it is called howbigreally.com and which allows you to overlay a number any stories, including the moon walk on a neighbourhood you like. Try, for example, the Gulf oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. Here, because I live in Manhattan, I typed in my code ZIP, 10025 and hop! Suddenly boiled of BP is floating in the Catskill Mountains in the middle of the long Island (which makes the oil spill smaller as I had assumed.) You can do this yourself. Just type in your ZIP.

Or how about the terrible flood that took place in Pakistan earlier this year? If it had taken place in my zip code, it would have stretched the St. Lawrence Canada in Baltimore, Maryland (it is larger, much larger, as I had assumed).

Sometimes, what feels big is much reduced. Sometimes it is much larger.

Let me finish with this map of Africa designer Kai Krauss. It's called "a small contribution in the fight against rampant immapancy." We know that Africa is great. Everyone knows.
But look at this thing!

Africa is so great, you can pack all the United States, all of China, the enormity of the India and every bit of inside Europe and still have room for Japan low skinny at the bottom right!

Big is great. But when comes a good designer, you get a better idea of the great - and making it bigger.