BiofusionDesign: Awards winners

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Adversity Index Map

Feb 24, 2010 By Vu Nguyen Section:

Portfolio

Categories:

Design, Map, Programming

Update Feb 24, 2010: I just learned that this piece won a Best in Business award for creative use of online media from Society of American Business Editors and Writers. I want to thank all the participants who made this project possible. Cheers!

The Adversity Index, from msnbc.com and Moody’s Economy.com, measures the economic health of 381 metro areas and all 50 states. Each area is in recession, at risk, recovering or expanding. On this map you can explore changes in the four components of the index: employment, housing starts, housing prices and industrial production, each shown as a percentage change from a year earlier.

This map contains more than 350,000 data points. It was a challenge because we didn’t have appropriate database tools to support the map. We had to split the data set into five big chunks and merged them in Flash. I wrote a tool that allow loading data from different subsets and merged them into one data structure that was plotted on the map.

Endorsements of All Shapes and Sizes

Nov 16, 2008 By Vu Nguyen Section:

Portfolio

Categories:

Design, Programming

The interactive feature is a collage of politicians, ex-politicians, celebrities and newspaper opinion pages. Mouse over to view which presidential candidate they endorse.

Click here to view the graphics

Awards and honors
2007 – Awards of Excellence from Society of News Design

Interactive Tour of Mount Kilimanjaro

Nov 16, 2008 By Vu Nguyen Section:

Portfolio

Categories:

3D, Animation, Audio, Video, Design

Every year, thousands of people set to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, but about a quarter of them fail before reaching the summit. The rest, who succeed, become very ill from latitude sickness.

Is it worth the efforts? Check out Tom Bissell’s account of his painful and exhausting climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Click here to view the graphics

Election '08 Campaign Finance

Nov 16, 2008 By Vu Nguyen Section:

Portfolio

Categories:

Programming

The interactive map shows campaign finance data for each presidential candidate in the 2008 election. The version I worked on that won an award was published in 2007. It has been subsequently replaced by the current version on the site.

Click here to view the graphics

Awards
2007 – Awards of Excellence from Society of News Design

Baroque architecture of Arequipa, Peru

Nov 16, 2008 By Vu Nguyen Section:

Portfolio

Categories:

3D, Animation, Design

This is my last project from school. In fall 2006, I spent 10 days with a group of fellow journalism students in Arequipa, Peru producing multimedia stories. Each of us covered an aspect of the city. I chose to cover the city’s architecture. We used all kinds of media such as photo, video, audio and graphics in this project. The project was sponsored by Sister Cities International.

I spent a lot of time on this project. It still is the most ambitious 3D project that I have ever worked on. I started with an idea of creating a 3D virtual tour of the famous Santa Catalina Monastery. Later on, I decided to do the main plaza (Plaza de armas) as well as a bird view map of the whole downtown area.

Since I didn’t have enough references to create a realistic model, I ended up spending a lot of time taking pictures and drawing hand maps of the monastery. In the end, I managed to put all the hundreds of doors and windows in the correct place (or in my dream I did :)).