Peggy Hollinger and Sam Learner from the Financial Times have put together this impressive piece about how fast-moving debris in space, created accidentally or intentionally, is becoming a threat to the region known as low Earth orbit.

They cleverly use 3D models of satellites and pieces of debris around Earth to show the magnitude of the problem. Smooth transitions, beautiful animations, and constant-yet-inobtrusive motion truly bring this project to life.

As Sam said, this is a project that changes our idea of what’s possible for a visual story.

For Bloomberg, Sophie Alexander has written this article about billionaire Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, and his impact on the lives of the locals of a Hawaiian island called Lania after purchasing it. Visual journalist Jeremy C.F. Lin provides a tour of the island using Google Maps with annotations to give the reader a sense of how Ellison controls the island.

The South China Morning Post visuals team has published this story showing the housing conditions of over 220,000 Hong Kong residents. The integration of illustrations, 3D modeling, a map, and charts enables visitors to get a glimpse of what people live through in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

The Story Lab at ABC News has analyzed the results of Australia’s recent election using a scatterplot to showcase which issues drove people’s votes. The chart also includes results from the 2016 and 2019 elections to demonstrate how voters shaped the ruling system and where they lean on crucial issues years later. It is a great illustration of the power of using one, consistent example to tell a visual story.

Technologist and data visualizer Chris Whong has built the Urban Scratchoff, a cool site that lets users explore aerial imagery of NYC in 1924 and 2018. Users can zoom and pan through a map of the city and “scratch sections off” to uncover how NYC has changed over time.

If you want to read more about the project, read the blog post explaining how it was built and what inspired it in the first place.