And this is the second leg of our little bal­anc­ing act we started Friday. As we’re barely a month away from the Amer­i­can elec­tions, it was to be expected that polit­i­cally charged sub­jects might pop up, even on a pri­mar­ily type-​oriented blog. We are ulti­mately part of the world. So we thought it would be a sound idea to post two entries with dif­fer­ent world views one after the other, to pre­vent people from accus­ing us of any bias. (Hey, is there an echo in here? ;)

I was sent a link to The Hidden Cost of War, a wor­ry­ing piece of motion graph­ics posted on GOOD. GOOD is a col­lab­o­ra­tion of indi­vid­u­als, busi­nesses, and non-​profit orga­ni­za­tions push­ing the world for­ward. Since 2006 they’ve been making a mag­a­zine, videos, and events for “people who give a damn”. The GOOD web­site is an ongo­ing explo­ration of what GOOD is and what it can be.

In 2003, Donald Rums­feld esti­mated a war with Iraq would cost $60 bil­lion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war oper­a­tions is more than 10 times that esti­mate. The infor­ma­tion video The Hidden Cost of War exam­ines what’s behind the bal­loon­ing fig­ures. It draws on Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaus­tively researched book, The Three Tril­lion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Con­flict; which breaks down the price tag, from cur­rent debts to the unseen costs the Amer­i­can people will pay for many years to come.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion between GOOD and Ath­let­ics explains the com­pli­cated matter in a motion graph­ics piece of just under three min­utes. Using highly styl­ized infor­ma­tion graph­ics and ani­mated typog­ra­phy in flat cyan, red, grey, and black, it is designed in the shift-rotate-and-zoom style that seems so pop­u­lar these days. There is no whizzing or mor­ph­ing 3D graph­ics in sight. Trade Gothic Bold is used through­out the whole video, except for some Trade Gothic Bold Con­densed No. 20 in the begin­ning. It proves once more that this vin­tage straight-​sided sans by Jack­son Burke is a ter­rific design, a time­less clas­sic that per­forms very well in vary­ing con­texts. The video is nar­rated by Andy Bouvé, and fea­tures “You Can Not Believe It”, by Copy – one of the most unsearch­able band names on the ’net – of the record label and art col­lec­tive Audio Dregs.

See also three​tril​lion​dol​lar​war.org.

Tags: animation, motion graphics, typographic animation