Giorgia Lupi: Data Humanism

Humanism, the philosophy at the center of her practice.

Data represents real life, a snapshot of the world in the same way a picture catches a small moment in time, and it is primarily human-made. Numbers are always placeholders for something else: knowledge, behaviors, people. Yet in the impersonality of a merely technical approach, that connection can get lost. The more ubiquitous data becomes, the more we need to make it unique, contextual, and intimate. So how do we bring data back to human life?

In her talk, Giorgia Lupi presents Data Humanism, the philosophy at the center of her practice and the subject of her first TED Talk in 2017. It calls on designers to embrace complexity, move beyond standards by sketching with data, always sneak context in, and remember that data is imperfect, so that design can convey knowledge and inspire feelings at the same time. Trained as an architect, with a PhD in Design from Politecnico di Milano, Lupi co-founded Accurat in 2011 and joined Pentagram as a partner in 2019. She shares the thinking behind projects such as Dear Data, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and 1,374 Days: My Life with Long COVID, her visual op-ed in The New York Times, which won the Compasso d’Oro in 2025. A 2022 National Design Award winner, she makes the case for a second wave of data visualization, one that connects numbers to what they really stand for.

Pratt Institute’s School of Design invites you to join us for this Design Discourse talk.

Giorgia Lupi is an award-winning information designer and a partner at the international design consultancy, Pentagram. Her work synthesizes data and storytelling in innovative ways to create unique and singular brand expressions for clients such as Google, IBM, Gates Foundation, and The New York Times. Her vibrant and inspiring design work empowers leading global organizations to achieve their mission through data-driven storytelling, and reflects her belief that data has the capacity to make us all more human, advancing our intelligence, engagement, and delight.

One of the most lauded designers of her generation and a prominent voice in data design, Lupi received the National Design Award in 2022 and the Compasso d’Oro in 2025 for her visual op-ed in the New York Times.