The Center for Clean Air Policy: Illustrating the Importance of Climate Change Issues
As the only independent, nonprofit think tank coordinating research on climate and environmental issues while driving policy at the local, national and international levels, The Center for Clean Air Policy (CCAP) has wide reach and great influence.
To coordinate with the Center’s testimony before Congress on growth and climate change, we designed their report Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change and Prosperity. Growing Wealthier documents how efficient land-use planning can improve household resilience to rising oil prices by enhancing travel choices. Allowing more people to live closer to job centers can boost employment rates and income levels for low-wage workers while reducing exposure to congestion for all. Smart growth policies are also shown to cut government infrastructure costs, enhance public health and conserve natural resources.
The report provides specific recommendations for the federal government to “equip and empower” state and local experts to implement smart growth policies and realize their economic and livability benefits. “Do. Measure. Learn.” policy programs centered on action, measurement and analysis give practitioners room to experiment and build upon their successes. Incentive-based programs that reward economic and environmental sustainability encourage more communities to follow suit.
The report contained a wealth of new research and groundbreaking information; rayogram’s challenge was to present it clearly, concisely and appealingly. We didn’t want the important information to appear dense and difficult to digest.
The original illustrations create a distinctive, welcoming publication that aimed to broaden the audience for this important piece of research. We applied radical clarity to the design of the charts and graphs, paring them down to their essentials and bringing them all together into a consistent style to let the information emerge as forcefully as possible.
The overall style, with its hand-drawn illustrations, disciplined typography and restrained color palette, evokes the modernist design traditions popular in the 1950s and 60s. We felt that paying homage to this period of American culture—with its activist tradition and optimistic outlook—added a nice subtext to this very contemporary work.
“For CCAP’s publication Growing Wealthier, Rayogram took what could have been a dry tome and gave it a distinctive personality by creating a unified set of clever and lively graphics. Whenever I think of the book now, I picture the Growing Wealthier tree sprouting from the soil of smart urban planning. I highly recommend them.”