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9/19/2016 Archive

Hot Data

Curiosity and a shared love of data led designers Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec to become transatlantic pen pals for a year – the results can be found in their fascinating and very revealing new book Dear Data.

Words by Grafik

When NYC-based designer Giorgia Lupi and UK-based designer Stefanie Posavec discovered a shared love of data, they decided to embark on a year-long voyage of discovery. Every week they sent each other a postcard on a different theme, visualising the often-complex data that they'd gathered on the subject in colourful and playful ways. The result is the amazing Dear Data, published this week by Penguin. It makes for compulsive reading and shows us that data doesn't have to be boring and clinical – the pair's offline approach is a heartwarming record of their day-to-day activities, and a revealing glimpse into their lives. We caught up with Giorgia and Stefanie to find out more.

How did you first meet, and how did the idea for the project come about?

We had only met each other in person twice when we decided to embark on this project together. We were both speaking at The Eyeo conference in the summer of 2014, and a plan to collaborate was hatched (as they usually are) over a few beers…

We both have a very analogue approach to working with data, which is relatively unique in our field, so we thought it would be interesting to work together to create a data project that showcased our interest in the analogue, and using a slow, manual method of rendering data.

We also took the biggest constraint as a design one: one of us lives in London and the other in New York, how can we exchange our data-drawings? The idea of becoming ‘data pen pals’ and sending postcards to each other across the sea seemed very compelling, and we decided to take in the risk that some of our postcards might get lost or damaged during their travel.

You both work with data, was this a conscious attempt to demystify it and make it more accessible, or just something that you thought might be a bit of fun?

It definitely was an intentional attempt to show how data is not scary, is not necessarily “big”, but is ever present in everyone’s lives: we are all made of small and big data, quantitative and qualitative ones. This project allowed us to speak about data to an audience that is not only made of designers or data geeks, with the project we explored the role that data can have in how we understand personal experiences and people’s lives: data is often considered to be very impersonal, but this project aims to highlight the opposite through the exploration of using something seemingly 'cold' to communicate messy, emotional aspects of being human.

Also, we have both found with previous projects reaching a wider audience is that it’s often difficult to get people to understand (for example) what big data is or open data is if they don’t know what ‘data’ is in the first place. So, we feel we need to explore projects that answer this question first. Because Dear Data looked at domestic and often mundane data that most people can relate to, we've been able to show that data is something that is quite simply in every aspect of our lives, and that it isn’t ‘scary’, or intimidating.

In short, we think that small, human-scaled data is a friendly stepping stone to more in-depth bigger-picture conversations about data’s place in our culture and society, data privacy, and so on. Small is a good place to begin.

How far in advance did you decide on the themes for each week? Were any topics off-limits?

We started with a shared list of possible topics for the fifty-two weeks ahead, but ultimately we would decide the topic for the week over the weekend before. We would text each other and decide together what would be best to track for the week ahead, depending on what we’ve been logging for the previous seven days and discussing about how to even evolve our data collection. In fact, as the project evolved, we challenged ourselves to find data not only in our activities but also in the words we use, in our thoughts, in our surroundings, in our belongings; to compose an articulate portrait of ourselves and our lives.

Did it feel odd revealing often quite personal details to someone who you’d only met twice?

Surprisingly, it didn’t. Over the year, we noticed how this natural process of personal investigation through data became less and less intimidating, and the more we became confident with our process, the more we wanted to explore how a person’s whole personality – including her flaws and obsessions – can truly be described using data alone.

Since when gathering data of any sort, it’s vital that you are honest in your data gathering, this need for data integrity meant that we needed to have integrity and ensure that we were revealing ourselves as we really were, warts and all.

We also think that by when presenting even the most dark and personal matters in data form, it offers you a bit of thoughtful distance to the subject makes you less afraid to reveal such secrets, and then you are even more ready to share your whole self to the other person.

Did you discuss your postcards with each other when you received them?

Yes, once we would get the delivery in our mailbox, we would spend some time with the postcard deciphering what the other person encoded and how to unfold the narrative of her week through her drawing. But we most often then texted each other to comment tiny details, or even to ask for more: we like to say that data should be seen more as a beginning of a conversation rather than an ultimate answer to any questions.

Did the postman (or anyone else) read your cards? Did any get lost in the post?

This is something we have always wondered about, we don’t know. Once Stefanie had to hand a postcard to a person in an office to be posted instead of just putting it in the postbox, so she always wondered what the office staff thought when a large brightly-coloured hand-drawn postcard was pushed in their hands.

Postcards often got lost in the post, which could be particularly frustrating if it was a week we'd spent a good amount of time drawing, though we also accepted this would naturally be part of the process. For any postcards that went missing we would just re-draw them and re-send.

Were there any points where the project felt like it was taking over your life? Did you ever feel like giving up?

We often felt overwhelmed, and it sometimes felt like it was taking over our lives. However, that’s the power of collaboration: knowing that the other person was there going through the same thing was the impetus we needed on the days when the data-gathering felt all consuming to push us forward. But we never felt like giving up, as we could feel that we were up to something compelling both for our personal and professional lives; moreover we didn’t want to let the other person down: it is definitely great to collaborate with someone else on such demanding project, to hold each other accountable.

Regardless, we feel that some of the best projects we have seen from artists and designers are those that have a particular level of personal toil and labour invested within them, almost to the point of the extreme, as it generally means they have put their whole being into making the project as best as they could, so what can we say, we have a fondness for painful projects such as these.

If you were about to embark on it now, is there anything you’d do differently?

We don’t think so, over the year the project was ever-evolving, in a way, as we saw this project as an opportunity to experiment and explore, so every mistake (if they are even really mistakes) was a chance to learn something new. We are happy with the project, imperfections and all, as it forced us to be less afraid and just make something without spending too much time making everything perfect (as designers are wont to do). We are also very excited about the outcome of the project: not only we made it through fifty-two weeks of personal investigation through data, we also designed a book out of the project, which not only showcases our correspondence but also presents newly-drawn illustrations unfolding what we've learned about our lives in data, highlighting how everyone can become a data collector.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about each other, and the world in general during the process?

We’ve surprisingly learned how close two human beings can become by sharing their stories in form of quantitative information, one topic at a time. We feel very close to each other, we truly became friends through our data. We learned about each other obsessions, flaw, imperfections, desires, deep emotions and fear, and we learned to love each other despite having met so few times in real life. We also learned that data collection can be a form of meditation: by having to acknowledge, count and analyse what is happening in your mind and around you, you are reminded of the present moment in a way we couldn’t envision before.

Are there any other joint ventures in the pipeline?

Yes…But it’s early days, so watch this space.

Find out more about the project, and order a copy of the book at dear-data.com.

OK—Swiss

Proving that Swiss graphic design doesn't stop with Müller-Brockmann, Swiss Style Now is a new exhibition in New York showcasing the very best Swiss graphics from the past five years.

Wonder Stuff

Invisible to the eye, thinner than a human hair and 200 times stronger than steel, wonder material Graphene is celebrated in a new exhibition designed by LucienneRoberts+, Universal Design Studio, and DHA.

Northern Exposure

Top notch design conference with a difference Offset is back – and this time it's heading up North to give the good folk of Sheffield a two-day dose of ‘Information, Inspiration and Perspiration’.

Up and Under

Craig Oldham and Rick Banks have published a book about football undershirt celebrations – I Belong To Jesus is proof that publishing and editorial thinking are as much a part of the designer's arsenal as visual communication.

Words by

Tevez has deployed many celebrations in his career – everything from dummies to shin pads (also featured in the book) – but he turned his undershirts into a social billboard campaign during his time at Manchester City and Juventus. Revealing the names of suburbs, slums, and ‘villa miserias’ in the urban region of Buenos Aires, Argentina (where the striker was born and raised) Tevez dedicated these celebrations to help raises awareness of the hardship and stigma facing these places and their people.

OK, so not all of the celebrations in the book are undershirts – some are masks, shinpads, and underpants. Striker Nicklas Bendtner cheekily celebrated scoring in EURO 2012 by dropping his shorts to reveal branded underwear of notably-mischievous Irish bookmaker Paddy Power. Bendtner was fined €100,000 for “wearing his lucky underpants” and the bookmaker, who covered the cost, issued an irreverent statement declaring; “We don’t believe that Nicklas should be penalised for nothing more serious than wearing his lucky underpants which, in fairness, was only a bit of fun” adding a warning to other players to beware “the wrath of the over the top UEFA pants police.”

View clips of the undershirt celebrations and buy a copy of the book at ibelongtojesus.co.uk

About a Boy

In today's Covershot, book designer Becky Chilcott sings the praises of Dave Shelton’s A Boy and a Bear in a Boat – a children's book with a very unusual cover.

Words by

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

A boy and a bear go to sea, equipped with a suitcase, a comic book and a ukulele. They are only travelling a short distance and it really shouldn’t take long. But their journey doesn’t quite go to plan…

Faced with turbulent storms, a terrifying sea monster and the rank remains of a very dangerous sandwich, the odds are against our unlikely heroes. Will the Harriet, their trusted vessel, withstand the violent lashings of the salty waves? And will anyone ever answer their message in a bottle?

If you read this synopsis for Dave Shelton’s A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, what would you imagine the cover to look like?

I love asking this question to my MA Publishing students as a way to get them to open up their imaginations and to learn how to start thinking about designing a book cover. Their ideas and expectations are very different from the actual cover of the book – and that is why I love it so much.

Working in children’s publishing is an utter joy and I am constantly immersing myself in bookshops, the shelves at work and what my colleagues are designing to find inspiration and get lost in another world for a few minutes or (ideally) hours.

When I came across the hardback cover for A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, it made me stop, do a double-take and check if it was indeed a children’s book. The design is so understated, it’s almost too simple: an expanse of blue, grid lines, a coffee ring, a couple of black spots, scuffs, scratches and a cream strip along the bottom edge. To quote Anthony Burrill, my first reaction was “I like it. What is it?”

Does it scream, “Hello I’m a children’s book” like the more brightly coloured books that sit alongside it? The answer is probably no. According to the book’s author-illustrator, some people have been known to glance at it and think it looks like a scientific textbook.

On further inspection, you discover that the book is heavily illustrated throughout – the fact that the cover doesn’t hint at this in the slightest goes against my better judgment as a book designer as you’d normally want to showcase the wonderful images within.

I usually pick books to read without my designer’s hat on but this was the one time I bent the rules and knew I had to find out the reasons behind the thinking.

Talking to Dave Shelton about the process he went through designing the cover, he said: “I had a brief think about the cover quite a long while before it was needed…and I spent an evening just jotting down postage stamp sized ideas on one page of a sketchbook, not worrying too much about details. Weeks later, when my publisher suggested I should start to think about a cover, I confidently returned to that sketchbook to remind myself of what I’d done, smugly thinking: ‘This is fine, I’ve got a stack of ideas in the bank already’. But what I’d forgotten was that in the meantime I’d agreed to change the title of the book, and many of the ideas I had before made no sense at all without the old title. So I was pretty much starting from scratch. I worked up maybe half a dozen new roughs and submitted them to the publisher, and I got quite a lukewarm response…

I’d been looking at a lot of book cover designs on the Caustic Cover Critic blog, so I thought I’d have a go at something that (I hoped) would be the kind of bold, design-led approach that featured there, rather than simply trying to produce an illustration. My first attempt came together in about twenty minutes and when it was done I thought, ‘Ooh that’s good, but they’ll never go for that’. So I showed it to my then partner (now wife), Pam, and her response was more or less: ‘Ooh that’s good, but they’ll never go for that, but you should show it to them anyway’.

So I emailed it off fully expecting a response along the lines of: ‘No, come on, Dave, be serious’, but I had a reply from them within about fifteen minutes saying they loved it and to go ahead with final artwork.”

Once you read the book and look again at the cover in more detail, squinting at those black spots, it makes absolute sense; it makes you grin and marvel in the clever simplicity of the design and grin some more. It reflects the contents of the story so well; you finally understand the genius behind the design of this very quiet, unassuming tome. I am so glad that the publisher dared to be different – it was a risk worth taking – like the recent edition of 1984 designed by David Pearson – the idea is so good, you can’t imagine any other cover going on the book.

It’s a simple, well-executed design that doesn’t shout from the rooftops, isn’t all singing and dancing or whizzy and shiny – but for a book that reflects the story in the most perfect way, it wins on every level. I don’t want to say why – you’ll have to go and read it yourself.

Dave Shelton sums it up nicely: “I did occasionally wonder if it was a suicidal idea at the time. What I like about the cover is the way it reflects other aspects of the book: I like to think that both the cover and the story appear very simple on the surface but reward closer inspection.”

daveshelton.com

beckychilcott.co.uk

Cult Reading

There's nothing like a brand new edition with a smart new cover by a top illustrator to reignite your passion for a classic novel. And who can possibly resist MVM's latest pocket-sized designs for publishing house Gyldendal?

Words by Grafik

Norwegian publishing house Gyldendal has commissioned Magnus Voll Mathiassen (aka MVM) to create covers for four new pocket editions of cult books. An annual initiative, this year's theme was 'The Metropolis' and the books selected were Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray’(London), Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany’s (New York) and Ian McEwan's The Innocent (Berlin).

The city manifests itself in different ways throughout MVM's striking designs, which combine strong colour, bold shapes with silver foil-blocking. Aiming for the impactful but imperfect look of art exhibition posters from the 50s and 60s, Magnus designed a special “remixed” version of Helvetica which added to the quirky feel.

Image by Magne Sandnes

Image by Magne Sandnes

Image by Magne Sandnes

Magnus explains: “Pamuk’s book about his childhood, his relationship with his family and a culture which is linked with how the western world meets the old world – the block-like architecture with the subtle Blue Mosque in the background. Oscar Wilde’s character Dorian Gray’s eyes are depicted as both beautiful and appalling, with Big Ben counting the time. Capote’s Holly Golightly is a female-shaped skyscraper, ogled and objectified and being the centre point.”

See more of Magnus' work here.

Image by Magne Sandnes

Image by Magne Sandnes