Oil’d, by Chris Harmon

We’re often obsessed with oil. A year ago, the issue was offshore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon rig had exploded, and crude oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 53,000 barrels a day. We all watched helplessly as BP threw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. (Remember the golf balls?) Three months passed and 4.9 million barrels ripped into the ecosystem before the well was finally capped. Time to talk about it? Hardly. Now the discussion has moved on to skyrocketing oil prices and the issues surrounding them, like the causes (conflict in the Middle East, rising consumption in China and India, commodity speculation at home…) and the political implications for the 2012 U.S. presidential election if gas prices stay high. Weighty issues, to be sure. But before we allow the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 to fade into our collective amnesia, Chris Harmon, a Brooklyn-based designer, animator and writer, has created a work of animated typography to put some of the staggering facts into perspective.