Design for Graphicacy: The Case of Glocal Climate Change

On 26 May 2020, the European Union Council members agree on the central role that media literacy covers in the European population skillset. Among the various forms that make up media literacy, we also find graphicacy (Bhargava R. et al., 2015), defined as the ability to understand and present graphic-visual information such as sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, plans, tables, graphs and other non-textual formats. A form of literacy necessary -if not fundamental - in the increasingly datafied western society (Van Es, & Schäfer, 2017), which increasingly relies on visual data mediated communication and information. Indeed, new forms of information emerged, such as data and visual journalism, for instance (Bonegru, & Gray, 2021). These rely on analysing a vast amount of data and their visualisations to narrate today's complexity to a broader and more heterogeneous audience. Some of these projects also tend to enhance the graphicacy of readers, enabling them to understand better the charts that they feature, thus moving beyond their primary function of narrating the phenomenon dealt with. In this context, the present paper presents and discusses a case of interest, designed by the author, which contribute to the ongoing research on data journalism from a design and visual storytelling perspective. It is a further and emerging form, hitherto little researched, and necessary, especially to tell and understand complex and global phenomena, such as climate change (Prasad, 2019).