Giorgia Lupi, Partner, Pentagram
In conversation with: Kate Aronowitz, Co-Chair, Brainstorm Design 


Brainstorm Design 2022 - Designing With Data

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Brainstorm Design 2022 - Designing With Data


presentations from political polls to our weekly sleep scores. Mine are not looking very good by the way. Uh this torrent of superficial graphics shouts at us but often misleads were we understand misunderstand what it's telling us and the ubiquity is driven by the false promise of simplifying complexity. Georgia, Lupi and information design luminary is convinced that we can do better. And her manifesto for data humanism, she urges us to contextualize data and incorporate more qualitative and nuanced aspects in the stories we tell, thereby connecting the numbers to what they really stand for. Knowledge, behaviors and people, we'll ask Georgia how data humanism can help us tell more empathetic stories and explore how elevated data visualization helps brands better engage with their customers for our next conversation. Please welcome Georgia Lupi partner at Pentagram together with Fortune brainstorm design co chair Kate Aronowitz, everybody. Hi everybody. Um so Georgia, it's great to have you here with us today. Um you've been a partner now at Pentagram for about three years. Um Pentagram is amazing uh design icon but we usually associate them more with like brand and identity. It's really interesting that they have you on site now. Thinking about data like why add data into the mix. Yeah, yeah, I've been a part of the pentagon for three years and uh you might know Pentagram for brand identities and more traditional kind of graphic design projects but I think what they had seen in my work. And also the reason why I was particularly happy to join is that data can really be one of the new languages. I mean it's actually an old language but a new way that we can have right now especially to actually create brand expressions of any kind. Um It's interesting I think back until a while ago we thought of designers that we only had words and images to create brand expressions and televisual stories. I really believe the data right now is one of the fundamental ingredients. Um you know that we also have obviously it's about the approach to data that you have of course and you coined if we could get the first slide up please you've coined a term called data humanism and I think we've got your manifesto kind of explaining that um what we bring that up. Can you tell us what is data humanism and where did that come from? Sure. Um I started to think about um a different approach to data back in 2016. So this is a 2016 visual manifesto that I think still stands behind my work and it came from the realization that most of the times a lot of clients that I had tend to focus on the quantitative aspect of the data that they had. The data that they already collected as opposed to kind of like really focusing on what the data represented and all of the inherently human qualities of data because data is actually I would like to say data are plural, data are representation of our life and therefore they embed the uncertainty imperfection of our lives. And even if data come from a sensor, the human being designed the center and decided what to collect and what to leave out. So even missing data are a really important part of the conversation. And I think for me this is really was really a way to sympathize um what I think as a designer, I'm primarily a design and I'm not a data scientist, I'm not a statistician. As a designer. I can bring to the data world and to the way that we communicate stories to data focusing on the human qualities that again are inherently part of any data that we will ever collect. I love that idea that I think so often we associate data being very technical and I love the idea of like a designer being able to use it in a different way. So it's hard to ignore the role that data has played in our lives for the past two years whether it was red and blue maps on tv um or a curve. Like understanding what it meant to bend the curve or data you know on your phone every morning telling you to wear a mask or not or if it was okay to go outside or not. Um I even I was telling you recently that a friend of mine came back to work for maternity leave, she's a new mom, I see her in the office and like oh my gosh how are you doing? She does not show me baby pictures. She pulls up her phone and she shows me the feed off of her or a ring which tells me like how much she's sleeping and not sleeping and she's got his feeding schedule and she starts to tell me you know I think I can win him at night but the data is telling me maybe I shouldn't. I mean so we're inundated with all of this data is actually a good thing or a bad thing I guess. Again it depends on how we use them and how we um take a proactive approach and understanding them. I think though we're in a very interesting moment because if we think about the pandemic, I mean you studied but we passed from a population where only a few of us cared about data like I mean I've been obsessed with data for a while to a population and everybody looked at charts and maps every day to make critical decisions. But I think the question that we have to ask ourselves is are we literate enough like that illiterate enough as a population And that doesn't necessarily only mean learn how to read the charge. But do we ask ourselves critical questions about how is the data being collected? What is that? I'm not seeing in here even looking at hospitalization. Like asking yourself do you also look at the people who are discharged and the positivity rate, how many people have taken the test and I think the risk here is especially with theory precise charts is that we then tend to take them as universal truths as we see a 55 that the day after it goes up to 57 we say like wow this is really bad. Probably is and it really is an indication that it is, but we have to ask ourselves what is that we're not collecting, what is that? We're not there? And again, I think design is a great opportunity because we do understand data visually and so through visuals. Um we can make sense of them. Is it good or bad to have too much data? I think it depends on how much we can become data fluent as a population and so not to get overwhelmed and driven by data but but as opposed to that just really having it as a tool at our disposal to make better decisions and learn more about the world in a way. Mhm. Um I'd love to show some of your work that you have to do at at Pentagram because I think it might surprise people some of the work that you've done. Um and what I love about the first project that you're gonna show um a fashion project is it's it's about getting people to kind of notice details in a new way and and help them learn through data. Can you tell us a little bit about this project? Yeah, well it was one of the most fun projects I've worked on. I ended up designing a fashion collection for the brand and other stories which is a part of the H and M. Group. And every year they have a collab collection with an external designer or artist. Um and they asked me can you do, I mean of course they knew that I work with data. And so the brief was really this year with 2019 wanna tell empowering stories and inspirational stories about women. Um do whatever you want with data. You have 13 pieces of your disposal. And I told the stories of three women in a Loveless. This is the pattern that displays the globalists algorithm is a Loveless is by the fact the creator of computer science that she was by by the matter of fact really the person that first of all made a machine do complex math and the pattern that you see is the uh 36 step algorithm that she created. What's interesting is that you can go and look at the clothes and hopefully think that they're beautiful clothes that you want to buy home. But anything about the publicity and the way the decline worked with me started to show that there was data behind it. And so even again the photos with the model posing and me recreating the legend and the paper bags in the back had a legend about it. The other women were Rachel Carson first environmental activists that with the box out in spring, that was published in 1962 really spearheaded the environmentalist movement and Mae Jemison first african american woman astronaut um and her 1992 mission drowned space and the project was really successful. Um but I don't think it's because they were pretty patterns. It's because really people could use them as a almost of a spark of a conversation for telling a story. And what I think is that, you know, ultimately it's a different way of seeing a T shirt with a graphic written message, like the pattern that you're wearing our messages that you're proud to carry around. Um so yeah, that's a long story short about this project, I love it. And even the bag and I love, you know, you have the legend on the bag and everything. That's like this idea of going in and noticing the small details. Um, the next project, I think, you know, so much data can kind of divide us and be very cold and hard and I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about a project that you did with the singer, Katy keene and and and her daughter. Sure, Sochi um is a friend of mine, she is an amazing musician if you don't know her, like really shoutout Kaki King, She's great. Um but at some point, her three, that was 2017. Again, they're three years old daughter cooper got diagnosed with a condition named I. T. P. That affects her immune system and leads to spontaneous bruises, birth blood vessels on the scheme called paktika. And in the most terrifying cases even internal bleeding and cocky wanted to make sense of these periods and so this moment and trying to even figure out how to talk to doctors about what she would have serving as they were you know refining the diagnosis. So we started to collect data about what cocky observed daily like the level of bruises on cooper's skin. The particular how she was feeling. Um the medications that she was taking, anything that could have affected um you know what Cooper was feeling at the same time for herself to you know make sense of this. She started to collect data about how he was feeling and you know the things that she was trying and that was just me reading her blog she shared with me this very personal data. Um but then I asked myself you know she wanted to share the journey after and um she wanted to show what she was going through. And I ask myself how can I make a data visualization that can also evoke empathy and make people feel part of khaki story as opposed to doing a sterile visualization. So this is the sketch and I think you'll see the visualization after. Um Which I don't know if we'll be able to zoom but every single pedal that you see is one day on this four months of a data collection. Uh and obviously the timeline is not linear as in like this is interrupted in clusters by the days. And the moments that were most important for cocky and her family interrupted that. But the burst of red dots which are the moments where cooper got to the hospital to check her platelet level. And so the red dots that kind of like interrupted timeline are the number of platelets when you see a lot of them is good in the beginning that there's 12 or three. It's really terrifying. And then on top of each pedal um I have just like really painted in a way the brushes that will identify the intensity of the bruises. Like trying really to work on brushes that could recall that in the little Patika and a lot of other information that um you know, help us tell the stories through that. Then cocky composed music out of it. And so there's a video and everything is on my website, our pentagon website where she composed the song exactly as um the visualization of the timeline. And I think what's interesting in here is that cocky herself talks about this moment of data collection and data representation as a cathartic moment to understand makes sense. And remain saying. Um but then when we shared the project and we had the great opportunity to share it at the big Oprah theater in Cape Town for an artistic installation in a way so many people then told us that through data only because we told the story only through data then they felt so much connected to Kaki story. Probably more than a blog post with words could be. Um And so again if we can embed feelings and sentiments and hopes and qualitative details to any data collection. I mean obviously this is very artistic, very speculative and not doing this with corporate clients. But I think this is an invite to think about data has again human and potentially able to help. Yeah, no I love the idea of evoking empathy so much more than a chart to really show the human condition behind it. Um I think the last project we're going to take a look at very different. Um it's an identity project that you worked on with Bill and Melinda Gates. Right? That's the idea that data can show gaps opportunities and actually become a system. Yeah. So Gates get the Gates Foundation and especially right on Melinda french Gates. Um That's one of my biggest clients. We work with them a lot and this was a great opportunity because Melinda even right before the pandemic but then we worked throughout the pandemic was really focused on telling stories about gender integration. Um She talks about gender integration more than gender equality as a step forward to actually making changes happen. And we branded the way that they told these stories to data. So in the video that you've seen before you start to see that there are charts but everything starts with an equal and plus sign that overlaps and in itself functions as a branding element almost as a logo. But then get impact in the way that visually charts about different indicators that countries might have about how women are doing about finance, inclusion, education, care giving um and men are doing in the countries and so all the data that they were working with were comparison of unfortunately still very binary data collections about men and women where many times also data collected about women where insufficient insufficient and so not even barely coming to address most of the population. So part of the system that we created for them also included how to show missing data. And the system um created 20 templates for different data visualizations because at that point they needed like 20 indicators but then we kept flexing and flexing it right now. It's pretty much brand in the way that they tell stories about gender integration through data in a different way. Well thank you. I got this really inspiring. Especially when you think about the status science and and the tool that we can use as a designer to bring awareness to things. Um Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you very much. Yeah