The data say planting trees has a measurable impact on a city, in human health and economic benefit. We want to tell this story because planting trees relies on people going outside and volunteering, and the first step to increasing public participation is education. I pulled most of my data from NYC’s MillionTreesNYC initiative, using the 1995 and 2015 tree datasets. I compared the population of trees, dividing the data by which streets the trees were located on. I chose streets in particular because they would be immediately recognizable to locals, and also because of the pervasiveness that New York’s geography has in popular culture. Originally, I had hoped to create more intricate graphs, detailing the exact tree makeups of each street. Unfortunately, the datasets were very different in terms of structure—CSV keys were different, data formats were different—and ultimately I was only able to compare raw numbers of trees.
For this assignment, I wanted to focus on putting together a flyer of sorts for the public. My goal was to quickly educate a reader about the MillionTreesNYC initiative, informing them of the success of the effort and telling them of the benefits. I wanted to help them feel a personal connection, so I included the facts and figures I thought were most compelling. Finally, I included a call to action at the bottom. The entire goal of the story was to get the reader to step up and take action, so I included a link to the MillionTrees webpage where they could find different ways to help.
Since I don’t know anything about graphic design, I would want to work with a graphic designer who could make my argument even more compelling. Right now, I feel that the graphic has too much whitespace, and by improving the graphic design, I could make my story even more compelling.