Telling Stories that Matter
SwitchYard brings data to life. For the past decade, our clients have trusted us to tell their important stories. We create compelling visual narratives that capture attention and engage audiences.
Perception vs. Reality
Surprise is a good way of emphasizing a point. Interactive graphics empower readers to explore at their own pace, and to reveal data and information that may be new and unexpected. When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation asked SwitchYard to explain the facts about U.S. foreign aid spending, we identified a university survey that addressed their needs. Our editors then boiled down the key facts of the study into an interactive graphic that summed up the findings in three clicks.
Poverty
Women’s Rights
Landesa Rural Development Institute has an important mission: empowering women by strengthening their land rights. The organization needed to present its case in a clear way, to make the direct correlation between land ownership by women and economic and social benefits. SwitchYard mapped the regions where customs and laws hinder land rights, and used data to drive home the organization’s message.
Women's Land Rights
American Third World
Reportorial journalism is a specialty at SwitchYard Media. This piece was part of a series on the disrupted economy for MSN. We pitched an idea to the news editors at MSN about a concerning theme in the economy: people who find themselves in America’s underclass. Our editors identified five people to profile in five locations around the country and we tapped our network of contributors — writers and photographers — who carried out the assignment within a week. We produced the piece in SwitchYard’s portable slideshow template and we embedded graphical data on the photos to match MSN’s magazine style
The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a unit of the World Bank that helps poor people access financial services with the goal of engaging “unbanked” citizens with the broader economy. Over the years, SwitchYard has produced educational graphics to illustrate CGAP’s mission. We researched and analyzed information for this graphic from an on-the-ground survey conducted in Mexico and a series of research papers that analyzed the survey’s results. Because the graphic’s target audience was bankers and government policymakers, CGAP was most concerned with the organization of the data on an effective and compact one-pager that could be posted online, distributed as hard-copy handouts and repurposed as a poster.
Mystery Shopping In Mexico
CGAP, the World Bank’s Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, wanted to highlight the success of Tanzania’s mobile banking industry. Kenya was the pioneer for financial inclusion in Africa with its mobile access to banking, and charting the growth of Tanzania next to that of Kenya was key to showing how the strategy works to spread prosperity in the region.
Tanzania's Mobile money Revolution
Financial Inclusion
Small Farmers are the answer
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation needed a human story showing how independent farmers in Africa were being empowered to engage in agricultural networks. Part of a larger story that was presented online as well is in
presentations around the world by Bill Gates, SwitchYard produced an interactive graphic profiling one woman’s small farm. We coordinated the photo shoot in Rwanda and curated the imagery to present a compelling interactive feature.
SwitchYard collaborates with a network of award-winning independent, non-profit, investigative news organizations around the country that are often the first to expose important news events. Our Colorado-based environment reporter brought the problem of toxic runoff at abandoned mines to the attention of SwitchYard editors who pitched the idea to FairWarning, a nonprofit investigative news organization that focuses on public health, safety and environmental issues. SwitchYard embarked on an investigation that was presented in a succinct one-page graphic. The piece was republished in the San Francisco Chronicle, New Mexico In Depth and by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
Toxic Heritage: America's Abandoned Mines
SwitchYard Media is all about telling stories that matter in formats that work. Consumer Reports hired SwitchYard to graphically explain the complicated subject of genetic food engineering and illustrate how genetically modified organisms end up in our food. The graphic was used in both the print magazine as well as online. SwitchYard designed the graphic in distinct segments that were used independently on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on the Consumer Reports website. The graphic is designed to be blown up as a poster as well.
Sorting Through the Confusion about GMO's
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2011 In Review
Interactive data draws the reader in as it reveals the story behind the numbers. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) contracted SwitchYard to produce just such a piece—their goal was to make their annual report come to life visually. SwitchYard pulled out the key highlights and animated them with interactive graphics and embedded videos to add a human element and create a compelling executive summary.
The mission of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to aid and protect people forced to flee their homes due to violence, conflict, and persecution. The best way to raise awareness about the current crises was to tell the stories of the refugees and the people who help them. The UNHCR asked SwitchYard to produce a series of slides to locate the geographical areas and visually explain the extent of the problems, including the funding shortfall, using their data.
Global Emergencies
Global Migration
Environment and Health