Simple Animation, Big Impact

The short video clip called The Story of Stuff is a really great example of information design. The 20 minute video tells a story using not only Annie Leonard, but very dynamic and simple animations to graphically represent all of the statistical information she explains. The information wouldn’t have been nearly as understandable or shocking had they not used the animations to illustrate their point.

The animations were overly simplified black line drawings that moved slightly at all times (puffs of smoke from factories, shoppers going back and forth between “Walmart” and their homes) to remind us that this cycle called The Materials Economy is always going, whether or not we notice.

Color is used very sparsely. For about 19 of the 20 minutes the only color we see is used to represent “the golden arrow” of consumption. Basically the thing that drives the whole Materials Economy. It’s gold color stands out amongst the rest of the graphics to remind us of the important, no rather central role we the consumer play in this vicious cycle. Every time Annie Leonard points to or discusses the golden arrow it “glows” and a choir can be heard singing an iconic and holy sounding note to signify its importance. Then in about the last minute of the video, the entire linear representation of the Materials Economy shifts from black to green and breaks its linear form to create a circular (sustainable) model. Green has clearly gone from only representing money to also representing the eco-revolution, and the use of the color in the sustainable circular graphic attempts to reinforce the idea that the restructure of the Materials Economy is possible, and not only possible but as Annie Leonard suggests, up to us!

This topic hits very close to home with me. As an environmental activist I feel frustrated mostly by the indifference of people about the health of their planet. “Never in my lifetime” seems to be the phrase echoed by many people as to why they just dont care, but I think it’s less about that and more about the lack of information they have on the subject regarding the things they can do to to make even the smallest difference. This video presents the information in a way that everyone can understand and not only highlights the problem but makes suggestions for simple things we can do to help fix the problem we’ve created.