Produced by Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research, the economic report examines how each state in the United States of America fares in the global market. The report offered chances to make a lot of interesting, colorful graphics and generated quite a bit of press. I worked closely with the research economist in order to make sure the graphics clearly showed what the somewhat complicated data story told. The biggest challenge was thinking of how to visually display “export adaptability”—just try searching for that on Flickr. I did a little research to understand what export adaptability entails and concluded that transportation and shipping represented a lot of the import/export concept. Once I understood the topic, things just fell into place.
