“Liar Liar” – SEE BLOG PAGE FOR WHITE PAPER

Exploring the lack of truth telling by our 45th President, Donald Trump.

Audience:  Those interested in representations of the current political climate, and the number of verified falsehoods uttered by our President.  This is a continuation of my current work in Political Art Textiles.

The visualization takes two forms. One is a stacked bar graph, created in Tableau, and the other is an embroidered stacked bar graph, stylized as flames on a pair of very large men’s suit pants, meant to be the type and size worn by Trump. The 4 colors are groups of lie themes as identified by the Washington Post Fact Checker team. The viewer can interact with the Tableau by hovering over each color block to see the number of lies of that type in the selected month. The viewer can likewise interact with the textile by manipulating the lie measuring tape, to see the number of lies of that type in the selected month.

Data:  Because I was unable to get the Washington Post Fact Checker Database, I hand coded the monthly data directly from their website, then entered the data into an excel spreadsheet. I simplified the 12 categories into 4 for a clearer visual, then generated the stacked bar chart. Knowing that I was going to create ‘flames’, I selected a red-gold palette, then referred to this flame clip art to remind myself that the yellow needed to be on the bottom, building to red at the top to look like flames.

Textile Art Visualization:  Finding the right pair of pants to immediately say ‘Trump’ was essential. A trip to a Salvation Army and a long search through rows of men’s pants, landed this very large sized, dark blue, pin-striped, wool pants. The pin-stripes were important to keep the flames lined up with their month in the x-axis.

The embroidery floss colors were selected to match the clip art and tableau selections.

To translate the number of lies into physical distance on the pants I measured a point on the pants to which I wanted to tallest flame line to reach (approximately 80 centimeters from the hem). Next I found that by using a scale of 15 lies per centimeter, my tallest flame would be 79 centimeters tall. Using a pivot table and formulas in excel, I calculated each month/group into centimeters to create my embroidery pattern.

I randomly curved the lines to approximate flames, keeping the bottom and top of the flame near the pin stripe associated with the month. Month names and years went on next, then the legend was stitched on pant leg with visual space.

Next I created the lies measuring tapes, for although I worked in 15 lie increments, that’s a hard number to expect viewers to easily manipulate. The specialized scale was printed using two techniques for printing on fabric, then the long tapes were assembled.

The final decision came in the choice to display the pants using TWO hangars. This reinforces the visual that these are pants for a large man; according to research a man of Trump’s weight and height would wear a men’s size 48-50 pants.

Showing this project to family and friends during the past 2 weeks resulted in every person completing the phrase “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire”. I think this visual works.