STRATA: Glacier Mass Loss Visualization Mountain glaciers are reservoirs of frozen water and compacted snow dating back thousands of years. Over the years, there has been an observed decrease in glacial mass, attributed to increased greenhouse gases that are warming our atmosphere, creating warmer than average summers. Glacier change in North America has a number of negative impacts on things such as sea level, water resources, fisheries, and more. With new data from the 2025 survey of glacial mass, there was a record amount of loss on the Benchmark Glaciers in the contiguous United States and Alaska. The South Cascade Glacier experienced the largest loss on record, but the Wolverine Glacier in Alaska gained for the first time since 2012. This creates a unique duality: despite overall mass loss, the Wolverine Glacier increased. To compare these two, I created a sketch that runs two ways. In the first, you can toggle or press play to see the glacier levels over time. Years where mass was gained are expressed in blue, light blue for small gains and dark blue for large gains. For years of loss, light orange represents small loss while dark orange shows a year of large loss. The thickness of the stripe also represents how much of a loss or gain. Then, if you click or press M, you are able to see the reverse, where the design builds up over time, creating a "barcode" of the whole history. Side by side, the two glaciers show that one year of gain does not undo a long decline. Wolverine's 2025 rise is real, but it appears against a record of mostly loss, while South Cascade's ice sheet thins to a sliver. STRATA turns decades of measurements into layers you can scrub through, so the loss becomes something you can watch happen rather than only read as a number.

I wanted to rework my eyes with a new grid, with more intention of the flow of emotions over time. I also wanted the colors to be more accurate to the emotions and overall have the whole piece flow better. i messed around with the concept and came out with something i was pretty proud of. translating that to the poster was a little more difficult, i think i left it to be more intuitive then it really was just cuase i was so used to the system.

this week we were took one of our concepts and built out variables we could manipulate to code and decode information. I made physical sketches instead of online ones to grasp the concept a little bit more and showcase what i wanted to recreate with code.

The eye color variable is a mix of meaningful and random, i wanted to use blue as the sad expression and red for the angry expression. Beyond that I just choose other eye colors. Likewise the thickness of the eyebrows are much less intentional and are random, but they can help create a variety of emphasis on expressions. I think the constraints like eye size, and making sure the eyebrows don't overlap allows for more expression without the pieces becoming unreadable. By having a constraint we are able to express the emotions, the code, if you will. If there was nothing it would become illegible and the code would be lost. By having constraints we are able to unlock the beginning of the code. For this code the eyes stay stagnant, consistent. If i were to have them move around there would be too many variables and the emotions would be much harder to read. By having the face stay centered it allows for a singular face that expresses something, much like a conversation where eyebrow movement and eyes can add a lot besides the plain words you speak.