What with the NYC CFD crew supporting Water Aid at the last event, we’ve been pretty sensitive to the water issue in developing countries. So this post by John over at Social Design Notes piqued our H2O interest.

He went offline and dug up THE graphic that persuaded Bill Gates to shift his philanthropic strategy from cheap computers to public health–what could be the graphic that “saved more lives in Africa and Asia than any other in history.”

Here’s 1997 article and a close up of the graphic, For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink.

In John’s words:

After such an awe-inspiring setup, it’s remarkable to me just how unremarkable the graphic actually is. Particularly compared to many of the examples I used in my little pamphlet on information design, there’s nothing really visually compelling or innovative about this one. But perhaps that’s part of its impact: just a clear, concise table calling out key data. The graphic gets out of the way of the information. And while the numbers themselves are stark, I think its power also comes from its context within the brutality described in the narrative — and that for the most part, clean water and sanitation are not problems we don’t know how to solve.

An age old lesson–sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.

via: Social Design Notes