Behind the Story: Why we’re explaining inflation using a knitted red balloon

The Washington Post has covered inflation using data-driven charts, quizzes and deeper dives, but this time, we tried something different: An animated explainer using artist Anna Hrachovec’s knitted characters to show how inflation and interest rates work, with a red balloon representing the growing economy.

We talked to economics editor Damian Paletta and designer Emily Wright about why they took this approach.

So, an animated illustration of inflation. How did this idea come about?

Damian Paletta: On the economics team, we are always striving to make our material more accessible to more readers. We spent a lot of time in 2021 writing about inflation and supply chains and doing everything we could to think about different ways to tell the story, whether it was through workers or employees or ships, grocery stores, et cetera. But we really wanted this year to try to make it even more accessible and visual. That’s why we engaged with Emily and [the design] team, and everything took off from there.

Emily, what happened after Damian came to you and your team?

Emily Wright: We started brainstorming and came up with the idea of storyboarding it. It actually started as more of a comic book idea style. We did one last year on [track star] Noah Lyles, and we advanced from there. We started looking at illustrators, and there were a couple that were comic-y and a couple that were very traditional. But then I pulled this one out. I was like, “Oh, this is a little out there.” But everyone loved it.

Damian: All of our jaws hit the floor. We couldn’t imagine how to make it apply to inflation, but it was just so mesmerizing. And I think that’s what we wanted: Something that just draws people in — someone who would never read a story about inflation, but who [would think]: “That is amazing art, and I want to find out what that’s about.”

So let’s walk through the concept. It feels clear now, where this person holds a balloon that represents the economy. But when you were starting from scratch, how did you decide on the balloon and put it all together?

Emily: Something we do with illustrations is work with the artist’s style. [Anna] had all these fantastic characters, and she was able to come up with the cat and a pig and all these additional pieces that we just let her use her artistic imagination on. We wanted to do a balloon because it made sense as an analogy.

Let’s look at some scenes. Which one is your favorite and why?

Damian: My favorite scene is when the balloon lifts the girl up and the sun cocks its head back and has a surprised face. I think we were all that sun. You know, it was like, “What is going on? What is causing this?” That’s us when we go to the gas station, that’s us when we go shopping, when we get hotel rooms. I think it’s something that millions of Americans have gone through.

What did you feel you most wanted to show and explain about inflation? Sometimes inflation and interest rates can feel so abstract, but there are ways in which the government tries to control it — which you show with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as a blue bird trying to push down the balloon.

Damian: We know we have a good story when it’s something that people are talking about on the weekends with your friends or family. Inflation is obviously one of those things that has broken through. We haven’t seen inflation like this in 40 years, and I would say the majority of Americans have not been adults during a period like this and have no idea what the process is for trying to control it. So we needed to introduce the Federal Reserve to show that there is a process for trying to control inflation.

Now, we were very cognizant of not making it feel like the Fed’s just going to take care of it and it’s going to be fine. That’s why we had this late addition of the final dark cloud coming into the scene to show that we’re not where we need to go. Frightening things could still happen, and that could be the Ukraine-Russia situation or another emergence of covid.

So I think that’s what we wanted people to see: There is a process, there are people who are trying to make this better, but it’s not so simple.

Emily: There’s so much out there about inflation, and our goal was to make it super accessible. I really struggled with my economy classes in college, so I think this project was a way to take my experience of this whole confusing mess of our economy and simplify it to where people can understand it without necessarily even having to read.

The goal of the story is to make inflation very accessible. Were you ever worried that it would almost seem too simple? Some of the initial response to this story was that we’re leaving out the role of companies possibly price gouging or profiteering off consumers.

Damian: I really wanted this to be a visual story that was accessible to everybody. There are parts of inflation that are very controversial and unsettled, that people are going to argue about for a long time, and I didn’t think that something like this — that we wanted to be an entry point for people — would be a good place for that kind of fight. Price gouging and corporate profiteering are always elements of the American economy that should be studied and scrutinized. There hasn’t been a consensus on it in a place where I felt comfortable including it in this. Quite frankly, I think the fact that it might have struck a nerve with people is good. You know, we presented this in a way that readers from all political backgrounds would find accessible. I’m open to criticism, but in this case, I think we struck the perfect balance.

What are some examples of things that are unsettled?

Damian: One example is when people received unemployment benefits in 2020 and 2021. There was a big fight over whether those benefits were disincentivizing those workers from coming back into the workforce. Republicans and even some Democrats made the argument that if we continue offering these benefits to people, they’re not going to come back and work, and that’s going to make this labor shortage a big problem. So there was a huge debate about whether those benefits were making the economic issues worse.

We wrote a lot about this. I think both sides had points, but it became this ferociously political debate that got really noisy and made it challenging for us to cut through for readers in a way that would perfectly capture what was going on. So many people had made up their minds one way or the other about it.

What we’re trying to do with something like inflation is clean out a lot of the noise and just present [readers] with this issue that’s impacting their life. And it’s affecting everyone’s lives. Everyone’s prices are going up. We wanted to explain what was behind that. Were there some things that might have contributed to it? Absolutely. Should we have done a whole separate slide or storyboard on price gouging? I think that deserves its own kind of exploration to me.

This will be the first part of a series where we examine key economic themes. What’s the idea behind this?

Damian: It’s a series that the business team is launching where we’re going to pick specific themes like inflation and then find ways to creatively bring it to life for readers and make it really accessible. Each issue is going to be different, but we want to find things that everyone is talking about and experiencing.

Emily: All of these pieces are going to be a great starting point for anyone that may be younger or just new to understanding the economy — they see gas prices out of control right now and are like, “What the heck is happening?”

Damian: Emily raises a great point. I think some people are embarrassed to ask, “What is inflation?” And we want these stories to speak to those people.