Dear Data

Dear Data
First edition
AuthorStefanie Posavec, Giorgia Lupi
LanguageEnglish
SubjectInformation design
ISBN978-1-84614-906-1 (Flexibound)

Dear Data is a collection of postcards containing data recorded from the everyday lives of information designers Stefanie Posavec and Giorgia Lupi. The book was published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Press on September 1, 2016[1] and in North America by Princeton Architectural Press on September 6, 2016.[2]

Prior to this year-long collaboration, the co-authors had only met twice.[3] The premise of this project was to test firsthand how well one could get to know someone through reading their data. Postcards were exchanged between them on a weekly basis with the data being represented through a drawing on one side and a detailed key or legend on the other. A few of the topics include: A Week of Negative Thoughts, A Week of A Workspace, and A Week of New Things.[4] The project has surface similarities with the quantified self projects like designer Nicholas Felton's annual reports that quantify and represent life events like number of books read or place visited, but is more personal and less analytical, with hand-drawn illustrations replacing computer generated charts.[5][6] It "paints a human portrait with data."[7] Dear data is also, in a way, the opposite of Big Data, it is composed of representations little data about on the minutiae of individuals' lives.

The original post cards as well as several accompanying notebooks are now part of the permanent collection at the MoMa.[8][9]

  1. ^ "Dear Data". Penguin Press. Archived from the original on 3 April 2020. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  2. ^ "Dear Data". Princeton Architectural Press. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  3. ^ Davis, Nicola (21 August 2016). "Can you get to know a person through data alone?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  4. ^ Davis, Nicola (2016-08-21). "Can you get to know a person through data alone?". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Sorapure, Madeleine (2019). "Getting Personal: Teaching Personal Writing in the Digital Age". Biography. 42 (2): 404. doi:10.1353/bio.2019.0040. S2CID 203381733 – via Gale Literature Resource Center.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "2015 winners Dear Data featured in MOMA's permanent collection — Information is Beautiful Awards". www.informationisbeautifulawards.com. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
  9. ^ "Giorgia Lupi, Stefanie Posavec: Dear Data". MoMA. 2015. Archived from the original on 18 December 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2020.