‘Alive Under 5’

There have been great advancements in global health in recent decades, most dramatically seen in the mortality rate for children 5 and younger, which has declined more than half since 1990. “Alive Under 5” is a new project of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help bring attention to this progress and the remaining challenges of the world’s poorest children. Developed in partnership with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and published by Fast Company, the project invited five top designers to visually interpret the data and bring these stories to life. Pentagram’s Michael Bierut is one of the participating designers, along with Gail Anderson, Stephen Doyle, Chip Kidd and Debbie Millman.

Bierut and his team created a visualization that focuses on the 462,738 children saved over the past decade in the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, three of the biggest killers of children in the developing world. The typography is formed of dots that each represent an additional 100 children alive in 2015 compared to 2005, thanks to treatment and prevention.