Most Dangerous Street
Award: Yellow Pencil
Yellow Pencil / Spatial Design / Installation Design / 2020
Award: Graphite Pencil
Graphite Pencil / Digital Design / Immersive Experiences
Award: Graphite Pencil
Graphite Pencil / Graphic Design / Data Visualisation
Award: Wood Pencil
Wood Pencil / Digital Design / Creative Use of Data
Chicago has one of the largest gun violence problems in America. Every week, nearly 40 people are shot across the city. Yet many Chicagoans have become numb to the violence. The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence needed Chicago, legislators and voters alike, to see the weekly gun violence data in a new light. Most Dangerous Street is a walk-through, week-by-week visualisation of Chicago’s gun violence on one street. FCB Chicago collected real time data around Chicago’s gun violence from police information, and transformed that into an immersive data-visualisation installation.
What did the judges have to say?
Statistically, Chicago has one of the largest gun violence problems in America, with weekly gun deaths totalling as many as 40 lives. With the wall-to-wall media coverage of each mass shooting event we, the global audience, become numb to this violence. The brief was to present the shocking 'data' resulting from deadly gun violence to an equally jaded local population. The entry demonstrated an approach that was astonishingly simple and visceral. The audience is walked through a night time scenario on an archetypical and generic street. It is dark. Visitors run the gauntlet of traversing piercing, slashing, darting swords of laser light, like dangerous, errant gun shots. Criss-crossing these lights triggers simple projected plaques that detail the names of real people killed on the real streets of this very real city. Putting names to the devastation caused by firearms, and thus personifying the data. An ephemeral, outdoor, visceral, proto-cinematic experience, it is scary and moving. It literally and metaphorically goes deep under the skin. Under YOUR skin. It is simple and intelligent and very, very fit for purpose.
Charles O.Job, Designer & Professor of Architecture and Design, Berne University of Applied Sciences
Are you credited on this winning entry?
If you've been awarded Wood Pencil or above, drop us your details for further information about how you can order your D&AD Pencil. If you've previously won In Book or a Nomination and would like to celebrate your achievement with a Wood or Graphite Pencil, please let us know.