By now, you’ve probably seen this stunning info graphic which tells bluntly why sharks should fear humans hundred million times more than we should fear them.
Here’s a link to it so you can check it out again from Ripetungi, the Bristol-based info graphics firm which designed the image. The firm heard about the number after a Facebook message from content marketing wizard Joe Chernov who had just read a Huffington Post article about 100 million sharks being killed annually.
According to Robin Richards, the founder of Ripetungi, the enormity of the number made it difficult to wrap your head around. Joe also shared an idea for a graphic to add context to this fact making it easier to comprehend, while exposing the outrageous ratio of the number of people sharks kill to the number of sharks people kill.
Together we threw around a few ideas, some ideas were mocked up, and refined together. A simple clear visual emerged which told the story of this slaughter, according to Richards in an interview with Critter Files.
“There was a period of sketching to explore the set way to tell the story. The numbers are so large that once we decide that using icons was the most visualizing direct way to communicate what the content was about, the design evolved so that it got out of the way and served to make the viewer remember the content. The scrolling became the key design element, with the visuals supporting it.”
While the shark is the ocean’s apex predator and the most feared animal on the planet, in the time it takes to scroll to the bottom of this graphic 73 more sharks would have been killed.
h/t: Ripetungi
