U.S. Hurricanes

Excerpts from A Brief History of Hurricanes, a typography project focused on hurricanes in the United States.

A brief history of hurricanes and the National Hurricane Center

The cover design for A Brief History of Hurricanes, modeled after the National Hurricane Center's map icon for hurricanes.

Tech

  • Tableau
  • Adobe InDesign
  • Excel

Book

Chart: bubble chart of hurricane damages left page and chapter page on the right
Pages 12-13, featuring a bubble chart (Tableau) and an appreciation for baseline grids and serif fonts.
Chart: bubble timeline of the 50 deadliest and 50 most intense hurricanes in the U.S.
Pages 16-17, a 2-page spread of major hurricanes and hurricane history in the U.S.

These pages don't look like much; however they represent a semester of addressing a chronic weak point in my design toolkit: typography. I left this project with a newfound appreciation for:

  • Baseline grids
  • Leading
  • Acceptable length of a single line of text (35-65 characters)
  • Tracking/kerning
  • Widows/orphans
  • Uppercase vs lowercase (oldstyle) numerals
  • Text vs display fonts
  • Columnar organization

    • Data

    All data from the National Hurricane Center, a divison of the National Weather Service.