What does it mean to you that 7.7 billion people currently live on our planet? Can you grasp this number? Did you know that only 2.5 billion people lived in 1950? Do you appreciate how vast the growth rates of the global population were in the last years?
It's relatively easy to repeat these numbers and rates, but it's hard to understand them deeply. If we don't practice, our brains work on logarithmic scales: We find it hard to imagine that one billion is a thousand times one million. My goal is with this art project is to make it easier for us to visualize the world's population and its growth.
Depending on the display of your phone or computer, one emoji converts to roughly 3 - 40 million people. 3 million is still a big number, and it’s hard work to process these numbers. I want to invite you to translate these numbers into something you know, like a nearby city or a whole country. Then go on a journey and explore the differences between regions, genders, age groups, and their change over time. Finally, be amazed and proud of how we transformed.
I've started the project with the intention of completing it entirely by myself. I've achieved a lot, but like all of us, I’ve been reminded that I don't live and work in isolation. And that is one of my biggest learnings - not something new, but always good to be reminded of - to work together, ask for help, ask for feedback, and get ideas, appreciation, and support.
Thank you, Eleanor, and Simon.
What data source did you use? This project is based on the World Population Prospects 2019 report of the United Nations. They have a handy tool to download all data in an excel compatible format.
Why did you define only four age categories? I've used all the available emojis to represent the ages of people. Specifically: baby (0-4 years), girl/boy (5-19 years), woman/man (20-64 years), old women/old man (above 64 years).
Why are all emojis yellow? I didn't want to represent skin colors for various reasons:
- Only a handful of countries gather data on the skin tones of people, so there isn't any report from the UN or similar international bodies
- It is not an option to assign a skin tone to a country, because in most countries live people with various skin tones
- Existing estimates of the global skin tones distribution are very old and based on outdated, colonialistic world views
I am aware that the yellow emojis often are read as representing only White people. However, in this project, yellow emojis are the best choice despite their shortcomings.
What about people who don't identify as a woman or a man? The Unicode standard defines gender-neutral emojis, but the UN does not provide a third gender category in their reports - despite legal recognition for non-binary people in some countries.
Are all people wonderful? Yes.
Why can't I see visualizations of the years before 1950? 1950 is the first year that is provided in the report by the United Nations.
What is the meaning of the domain name humojis.world? It is the name of the project. It's a combination of Humankind and Emojis. Simply humojis.
Why is the website responding so slowly? I am aware that the website responds slowly. I want to optimize the speed but didn't find time until now. The underlying cause is that on every change, all emojis and their positions are randomly re-calculated. If you like to work on a fix, please send me a pull request on Github.
Is the website accessible? The website is accessible to people with various impairments. I've used standard HTML controls, considered contrasts, etc. But unfortunately, it's not optimized for people who use screen readers. If you have ideas on how to optimize this website, please get in contact with me.
Is the project open source, and can I contribute? Yes. You can access the Github repository. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. I am happy to get pull requests to improve the project.
What tools and services did you use to create this project? I've used various tools and services:
- Excel for data editing
- Figma to design the wireframes and visual layout
- Visual Studio Code to write code
- Svelte framework as the basis of the application
- normalize.css as CSS basis
- Netlify for hosting
- GitHub for hosting the code repository
- Firefox for testing
How can I reach you? You reach me best via email: stefanie -at- hetjens.com