In the autumn of 2020 I worked on a personal project that aimed to make sense of the first six months of the Covid 19 pandemic. Like most people, I found myself isolating with lots of time in my hands and wanted to pinpoint how my time was spent. 

Inspiration

I am a big fan of Dear Data, a project created by Giorgia Lupi and Stephanie Posavec that’s in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. My work is inspired by their documentation of their lives (albeit not during a global lockdown). Initial concepts were also influenced by my then role as a digital designer for marketing at QS.

Moodboard

After the initial thoughts on what I wanted to show, and deciding on the infographic I’m presenting here, I began shaping the visual direction by creating a moodboard and establishing brand guidelines. The moodboard helped me explore colour palettes, typography, and layout styles that aligned with the message I wanted to convey. The brand guidelines ensured consistency in tone, accessibility, and visual hierarchy throughout the design.

Together, these tools provided a clear framework for building a cohesive and inclusive visualisation.

One thing I had to decide early on when creating this, was whether I should make the calendar more detailed, showing everything I had been doing, like supermarket visits, if the exercise was a walk or a run, if the meeting with friends was a picnic at the park or a walk somewhere, or later in the summer a meal out or taking the tube. 

Pandemic days

I decided to keep it simple, documenting only the days I hadn’t been outside, my outdoors exercise, meeting friends and travel (a flight to Athens at the beginning of March and a Yorkshire road trip in July). I added milestones from the news to give the calendar a context; April’s loneliness makes more sense when there’s the government text message ordering people to stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.

Passion for data

As much as I enjoyed creating this, I had hesitated to share. Who cares about my lockdown activities (besides my mum)? Was this calendar worth sharing as a visual representation of a random person’s life during the UK lockdown? Was I oversharing here? 

I love data visualisation and have been attending workshops often. As Jane Pong said during a Graphic Hunters workshop, “Find data you are interested in and try them out”. This is what I am doing. During my application and interview process for my current role I was asked to share what I considered my best infographic. This project demonstrates my ability to turn personal data into compelling visual narratives. And I got the job!

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