My project for course: Information Design for Editorial Infographics

My topic
- How big is the sand volume of the Sahara desert ?
- How many paper cups will the sand in the Sahara fill ?
- Stacked on top of each other, what is the total height of the cups ?
- Can the total height be expressed as a fraction of a light year ?

Text

1) The Rubʿal-Khali desert, a sand sea
larger than France on the southern
Arabian Peninsula, is the largest sand
sea in the world. The area is 650,000
square km. The desert holds half as
much sand as the larger Sahara desert,
even though the area of Sahara is more
than 14 times bigger.

2) The area of the Sahara desert is
9,200,000 square km, a little smaller
than the United States. The Sahara
is mainly rocky. Sand sheets and
dunes only cover approximately 25
percent of the Sahara’s surface.

3) The ASTER instrument aboard the
Terra satellite orbits the Earth and
collects data about the Earth's surface.
ASTER data are used for a range of
applications, including generation of
digital elevation models. The models
have been used by scientists to map
the surface of the desert dunes and
the desert floor beneath the dunes in
Rub al-Khali. The elevation data has
a spatial resolution of about 30 meter.
When the elevation of the desert floor
is subtracted from the elevation of the
desert sand dunes, it seems that the
actual volume of sand in Rub al-Khali
falls within the range 8000 - 11000
cubic km.

4) We can estimate that the volume of
sand in Rub al-Khali is roughly
9.5 * 10 ^12 cubic meter and put this
sand into 4 oz paper cups. 4 oz are
equal to 1/8 liter. 1 liter is equal to
0.001 cubic meter, so 4 oz are equal
to 0.000125 cubic meter.
9.5 * 10 ^12 cubic meter divided by
0.000125 cubic meter gives
7.6 * 10 ^16 paper cups filled with
Rub al-Khali sand. The height of 1
cup is 0.065 meter.

5) The sand volume in the Sahara desert
is roughly twice as large as the sand
volume in the Rub al-Khali desert. This
gives 2 * 7.6 * 10^16 paper cups filled
with Sahara sand. If we put all these
paper cups on top of each other, the
total height of the cups will be
2 * 7.6 * 10^16 paper cups * 0.065 meter
= 9.88 * 10 ^15 meter. Since 1 light year
is 9.461 * 10 ^15 meter, the total height
of the paper cups is roughly 1 light year.

Workflow
- research for an original topic and organize the information
- do calculations
- sketch out how to visually explain the content
- select a heading
- write short texts for the content
- work on the overall layout
- find the right balance between text and visuals
- choose typeface
- select a color theme
- select illustration style