Giorgia Lupi is an information designer and data-driven researcher. She is currently a Partner at Pentagram, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, and a co-author of Dear Data, a collection of hand-drawn data visualizations. With her humanistic approach to data, in her practice, Lupi seeks to humanize and confronts the impersonality of data, designing captivating visual narratives that translate numbers to meaningful ideas and stories. Her work in information visualization intersects the data in the digital and print format, where she explores visual models and metaphors to make data more accessible to people.
Lupi was born and raised in Italy. After receiving her master’s degree in Architecture, she earned her Ph.D. in Design at Politecnico di Milano in 2011. In the same year, Lupi co-founded a design firm called Accurat, a studio that uses an unorthodox approach to data visualization design and development. As a design director at Accurat, she brought the idea of “soft data” into her work, helping the clients apprehend the more nuanced truths from data sets. Essentially, Lupi suggested a less technical approach to data visualization, where qualitative information is equally critical as the quantitative ones. Over the nine years of running Accurat, Lupi has worked with clients including Google, IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Following her passion for promoting a more humane way to harmonize with data, in 2016, Giorgia Lupi issued an article in Print Mag, where she introduced the concept of Data Humanism. In her argument, she alerts the pitfall of gleaning data as solely numbers and algorithms, rather focusing on the idea and the narrative behind data. Lupi suggests a more personal approach to how data is gathered and displayed ultimately would prove that subjectivity and context play a significant role in acknowledging big events and possibly social changes.
Bibliography
Stinson, L. (2018, July 03). Accurat’s Perfectly Imperfect Approach to Data Visualization. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/accurats-perfectly-imperfect-approach-to-data-visualization/
Lupi, G. (n.d.). Dear Data, The Project. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from http://giorgialupi.com/dear-data
Lupi, G. (2017, October 02). Data ITEMS: Exploring the Power and Depth of Soft Data for the Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from https://medium.com/@giorgialupi/data-items-exploring-the-power-and-depth-of-soft-data-for-the-museum-of-modern-art-e5f40a82943
Lupi, G. (n.d.). Data Humanism. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from https://bio.si/en/program/main-exhibition/34/data-humanism/
PrintMag. (2020, September 16). Data Humanism: The Revolutionary Future of Data Visualization. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from https://www.printmag.com/post/data-humanism-future-of-data-visualization
