by Frank James
Here's something I have to put in the why-didn't-I-know-about-this-before now? category. Graphic designer Jess Bachman has had a beautiful poster depicting the 2009 federal budget available for public consumption since last year. (He sells the poster on his website, WallStats.com.)
Bachman took President Bush's last proposed budget, pulled out the largest, most interesting areas of spending, then portrayed them as circles whose sizes are proportional to the the of the dollars allocated for them.
It's a visually arresting display that will cause many of us to never look at a federal budget the same way again.
Bachman was on a Microsoft Corp. show called Channel 10 talking about his poster. It's worth looking at to understand his approach. He also tells a great little anecdote about his appearance on Martha Stewart's TV show to talk about his poster. She was particularly interested in knowing what was allotted to Internal Revenue Service audits.
I'm hoping Bachman is already working on a poster to display the $787 billion economic stimulus legislation due to be signed into law by President Barack Obama tomorrow.
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