Faces Of The Fallen

Not to make light of tragic subject matter, but the Washington Post has created a nicely-designed interactive tool, called Faces of the Fallen, to keep track of soldiers who have died in Iraq. The utility presents a field of silhouettes that can be called up by month. Each icon represents a particular soldier. If you click that square, it presents identifying information, cause of death and a photo, if available, in the light green field to the right.

In a way, it is unfortunate I found this application so striking. While the web naturally lends itself to more creative interpretations of data, in general, Big Media still seems to want to treat the medium as an extension of print.

By the way, I found out about this tool on Mikhaela Reid’s blog. Mikhaela is an up-and-coming cartoonist whose work currently appears in the Boston Phoenix.