The news peg of the 300 millionth American, in Dykman’s view, forced him to open the piece with a spread on demographics. This spread would lead into the other spreads as an “overall portrait of the current US population” and how it reached 300 million. The demographics spread should be fairly straightforward; he could construct an entire display using Census data. Finding the rest of the Census data would be, he imagined, “kind of [like shooting] fish in a barrel.” Nonetheless, Dykman would have to make choices.

1. Traits . For example, he could illustrate the nation’s growth over time, or its ethnic composition, or its age distribution. Or, mused Dykman, he could examine the proportion of US residents who were immigrants, and their countries of origin.

2. Distribution . He could also include a display of how 300 million Americans were distributed throughout the nation. He already had a population density map that one of Time’s artists, Joe Lertola, had fashioned as an experiment a year and a half before. “It was just so darn cool I had to find a way to get it into the magazine,” Dykman says.