This 3D map of the midwest accompanied an IndyStar story about recycling rates in Indianapolis and the Midwest penned by my colleagues Sarah Bowman and Emily Hopkins.
The image acts as a bar chart to show just how far behind Indianapolis is to neighboring cities when it comes to recycling. The values were first chart in Adobe Illustrator, then imported into LightWave 3D for texturing and lighting.
This is how the image was presented in the digital versions of the story:
