Project Overview

FOOD CHAINS is an interactive column of The New York Times Opinion section that looks behind the scenes at our food supply using an irreverent combination of drawings and information graphics.

Organisation

The New York Times

Team

Self authored project for The Sunday Review of The New York Times.
Designer, illustrator, and writer: Nicholas Blechman
Programming: Jacqueline Myint
Art Direction: Aviva Michaelov

Project Brief

The first post, titled "Extra Virgin Suicide", explores how the Italian olive oil in your kitchen may be neither Italian, nor olive oil. Two thirds of the extra virgin olive oil on the market is not of that quality. Worse yet, sometimes it is mixed with other oils like safflower or hazelnut oil.

Project Innovation/Need

Part animation, part journalism, Extra Virgin Suicide is a ground breaking new format that pushes the use of illustration and storytelling on the web.

Design Challenge

To tell a complex story (in this case on olive oil fraud) in a series of captioned images, and to make the user experience entertaining. It would have been easy to do a straightforward presentation using charts and information graphics.

User Experience

Upon publication, Food Chains was on the Times' most emailed list, most viewed list, and was republished in every major newspaper in Italy. A parliamentary session in Rome on Olive Oil fraud was inspired by this blog. If this had just ran in the print edition, at most a few letters would have been written in response. The overwhelming reaction it received was partly because of the innovative online presentation.