Hello and welcome to another episode of the AIGA Design
Podcast. My name is Lee Sean Huang,
Senior Director of Programs and Learning here at AIGA, the
professional association for Design.
Hello everyone, my name is Julia Donatello.
I am the design, competitions and Event Manager at AIGA.
Hi everyone, Matt Deforesti, founder and CEO of Lego
Collective and visiting Senior Fellow at ODI Global Animal Skin
Foundation. And hello everyone, I'm Federica
Pragapane and I'm an independent Information Designer.
Thank you both for joining today.
We are excited to learn more about your your journey and
about Lego Collective as well. I know that Lego Collective is a
research and creative collective on migration, culture and the
arts, so I'm curious if you can share a little bit of how your
journey led to you both to work in the intersection of
migration, culture and arts. OK, let me start.
Since Lago Collective is my brainchild and my fault so I
might as well explain where he's coming from.
Lago has been in my head for some time.
It has only existed for the last couple of years.
It was founded in the fall of 2022.
I come from a very different background.
I worked for all my career as a policy expert, researcher,
analyst, mostly working on public policy, both in
governments, for example, at the Ministry of Finance in Italy, in
NGOs like Save the Children, and most recently at ODI Global,
which is a large global affairs think tank.
And I worked on all sorts of different issues in my career.
But since 2015, I focused, I started focusing more and more
on migration. Migration as a phenomenon,
particularly in relation to people crossing borders globally
and particularly across so-called the global South or
low and middle income countries as well as the trajectories
towards high income countries. And that's when I started to
worry. I started to worry that putting
so much effort and emphasis and sort of personal commitment to
research and data and analysis, trying to inform the public
debate on the reality of migration was just falling on
their fears. Like was it was just not
working? There was something that it
wasn't cutting through. Not only that, I actually
started to feel that it was beginning to hurt that it was,
you know, that every time there was a statistics or a very
compelling story about the realities of people on the move.
That very quickly turned into, you know, played into the hands
of the very well known toxic narrative that we see playing,
particularly during the electoral campaigns on our
media. As I was worrying and and also
thinking that the whole so-called infrastructure of the
international community that rests on this idea that there is
a rich global North and a poor global South, and trying to
interpret the movement of people mainly through this lens,
through those who need those who need protection and frankly
taking away agencies from these people.
COVID struck, and the story of the absolutely essential role of
migrant workers in our economies and societies became
increasingly well known. But in the very early stages of
the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, I started to collect data
and stories about the contribution of migrant workers
to the COVID response. And I had this instinct, really
this intuition that rather than trying to write a report about
it or try to, you know, to use my traditional toolbox of a
research and analysts to tell the story, the time had come to
try to do something different. And that's when Fidrika comes
into the scene, because that's when I contacted Fidrika and
said I got some data and a story to tell.
What do you think? And so let me maybe ask Federica
to take it from there in terms of how we got to where we are
today. Yeah.
So as I was mentioning, I'm an independent information
designer. I've been working in this field
since 2012, as a freelancer since 2015, and I I've always
had the passion of using my tools of using data
visualization and visual languages.
The visual languages that I use that are often also experimental
to talk about topics I care about.
One of my one of the first The first time I talked about
migration through data visualization was in 2016.
It was my first year as a freelancer and I I decided that
I wanted to use my competencies to talk about migration and
especially to talk about the journeys of asylum seekers.
I live in Italy and I was very frustrated about the discourse
around migration, about There is a lot of focus on the
Mediterranean Sea route in Italy.
There was the city's understandably so, because it's
very dangerous, but before that part there are often thousands
of kilometres spent travelling, hundreds of days spent
travelling. And I really wanted to tell
these stories using directly the the bosses of the people who
were doing such travellings and we were living such experiences.
So in that here I went in a welcoming centre in Italy and I
proposed to some of the people hosted there to, to create a
project to work on a project able to tell their stories and
their journeys through data visualization.
The project is called The Stories Behind the Line.
It's an old 1A relatively old one, but it's still one of the
projects I'm most fond of. And it's a vision narrative of
their journeys. And so this is the first, that
was the first time I used data visualization to talk about
migration. I did it other times before
working with Martha. And then in 2020, Martha and I
was just following each other on Twitter at the time, something
like that. And I remember that I received a
direct message in which she just told me as, as she mentioned, I
have this data. I would like to tell a story.
It was March 2020, March, April 2020, something like that.
And I immediately accepted because Air Story was a story I
wanted to contribute in telling. So that's how we met and we
worked together on this project that it's called Key Workers.
I could design it in collaboration with Alex
Caccintini. He's a designer and developer
and we use this project to, to bring these stories of
contribution to life. We designed these trees, one for
geographical area, because the, the, the research that Marta and
the ODI team were doing was collecting the stories of
migrant essential workers contribution.
And they had this very rich data set full of stories grouped by
continent and by sectors. And we created these trees, one
for each world region in which all the branches are the sectors
and all the fruits are stories of contributions.
And it's a project in which the users can just lose themselves
clicking on the different branches, clicking on the
different fruits. We didn't want to prove
necessarily a point to say, I don't know, in North in Africa,
there is this number of stories. We just wanted people to read
these stories in no specific order.
And that's what the the project does.
And something that it's very important, I think for both of
us is that it was periodically updated for years actually.
I mean, it's something that we kept on working on for, for for
a lot of time. And it was just the beginning of
my creation with with Matt. Well, thank you, Marta and
Federica for giving us some of the context and previewing a bit
of your work. For our listeners who are
listening in audio podcast form, we are now doing video for this
podcast as well, so we'll be able to show some examples of
the work. You can check it out at the AIGA
Design Channel on YouTube. But I wanted to connect now to
our conversation to the theme of the podcast this season, which
is design and performance. And we see your work is really
intertwined with this topic of performance in all of the
different definitions of all the different meanings of this word
performance. So could you share a little bit
about how you perceive the role of performance as you navigate
this practice of data visualization and storytelling
around migration? Let me actually connect what you
just said about performance to picking up the story that
Federica and I have just been telling.
Because of course, we, we, we came to the spring of 2020.
And as I said, Lago was really only born in 2022.
But the performance is key to what happens next in this story,
because what I learned as as a researcher, really working with
a designer like Federica was precisely the power of design to
produce knowledge, not just to represent the data, not just to
do beautiful images and signs, but to effectively take the
data, which is raw material, right, And weave into that raw
material a story and imagery of vocabulary, actually words and
visual words away for the recapose them that I was
personally blown away by by not just by their beauty, but by the
but their performance as in what they were actually doing to the
story that, you know, just for clarification, in the early
stages of the pandemic, this idea that migrants were valuable
contributors to to the response and to our societies and
economies was actually relatively new.
And actually, if you think about it, it hasn't lived much further
once they, you know, once the emergency past.
The first thing that comes to mind in relation to performance
is, is design performing in front of my eyes something very
different to what I'd been used to.
So much so that Fast forward a couple of years and also through
other collaborations and work really around textile and
fashion, I actually thought there is something in this,
right? There is something in this that
is not just a sidekick, is not just a little bit of
communications that goes hand in hand with research.
There is actually a potential to perform more, to perform more,
to create new, you know, to create new work, to create new
ideas, new conversations. And so that's the first thoughts
around performance is almost really expanding the space of
how data knowledge analysis can perform, particularly in the
public discourse and in public narrative.
And the other idea about performance I have it goes to
the very personal it relates to performing and an act of
performance. And that's actually what we do
in Lago. Two weeks ago we were in a
beautiful space here in London at the all other passports
annual event, The beauty of Movement 2024, where effectively
we performed Federica myself lenses say reading his poems and
Titsianaloci performing a sound. So Lago has become a performing
organization. I'm I'm a dancer, I study
contemporary dance and I relate to performance in that way.
And I am finding immense joy in putting out those performances
for people to to to see and to enjoy and to savor and to relate
to. So it really resonates to the my
old self that was always after hard evidence of what works and
performance from that perspective, as well as to my, I
guess my, you know, my inner self that's relates to rhythm
and dance and performances on stage.
Yeah. And and I think Martin, I never
talked about that, but I also have a similar background, not
in dance, but in theatre. I've been doing theatre as, as
an actress and also director, not a professional one, but for
many years. And I think that this part of my
past has a very deep impact on my approach to design because,
you know, when you act where you are on a stage, every single
aspect is very important in your relationship with the audience.
The the tone of voice, every single shades.
I mean, I see like I really see the balance in our voices and
gestures and small elements. They have a huge impact on the
relationship with the audience. And I think that there is
something similar to design. I really craft with a lot of
care each single detail of my visualizations.
And I really see them as the visual equivalent of text of
writing, but also of of acting, of speaking.
And for me, designing is really a communication act.
I always want to talk, to speak to someone, to an audience.
Then there are different kind of audiences.
Sometimes there are policy makers, but pretty often my
audience are just people who are browsing through a magazine or a
website or basically an exhibition.
And for me, working with care on all the also the aesthetics of
my pieces and not only the contents, aesthetics and
contents for me are equally important.
It's really a way of performing, of telling stories through
through the data, through the contents and then through the
visual representations. Yeah, I wanted to pull out some
of the themes that I'm hearing from you both.
And one is just what you were saying now, Federica, about the
shared vocabulary and metaphors between information design and
performance. When we use terms like, you
know, rhythm and repetition and gesture, all of these things
could be performed with our bodies or our instruments, but
also with graphics. And then what Marta was saying
earlier about this idea of design adding value as creating
knowledge. And it's not just how you
package the research done by other people and package the
statistics at the end, you know, it's really an integral part of
maybe visualizing, but also surfacing new insights so that
maybe we're lost or kind of under the surface, you know,
when we just have the text or just have the the data.
My follow up question to this is really about how you tackle the
advocacy part of this, because your work is not just to inform
people, but to really advocate for migrants and on the topic of
migration. So how do you measure your
impact or your performance to use the theme?
Like how do you know if a project is successful or what
are ways that you measure that in terms of the feedback loop?
First of all, let me say impact is all I care about, right?
All of this is about making, however small but a significant
difference and meeting some, making some headway.
And it really comes from a place.
And this is the first consideration of not having
impact. You know, there is so much I
actually worked in evaluation for a few years, so even further
removed from anything vaguely creative, but where, you know,
we get so obsessed about the measurements and the validity
and trying to really have the, you know, really proving that
we're making a difference. And then when we don't, we don't
spend enough time understanding why, right and, and really
building on what we're going to do different next time.
And in a way, the work that I'm doing now with Lago comes from a
place of not having impact. And as I said earlier, of actual
worry about, you know, I could have told the stories about, you
know, both the qualitative stories about the migrants
contribution to COVID or some of this more recent sort of
quantitative data around around visa rejections in other ways
until it was blue in the face and or like this and, and yet
making absolutely no difference. Like no, you know, like this
idea that you create knowledge and somebody will see the truth
in a space that is pure fiction. What lies are the the, you know,
the currency of the public debate.
You insert the nippets of truth, of analysis, of reasoning, and
they very quickly turned around to other lies and, you know, to
the advantage of whatever dominant narrative.
So, and that's actually to me is a really important so
professionally, and I wrote a little bit about the the
experience of making this changing at a stage in your
career when you've had, you know, you've had some experience
and you can look back. And so I want to I want to state
that this comes from a place of not having much impact and
actually not believing anymore that not just that doing
research and doing evidence on his own, you know, doesn't make
a difference, but also the doing it from a place where you are
observing the world from a standpoint of what we understand
development to be, what we understand wealth and well-being
to be interpreting the experiences of people from
around the globe was falling short of making a difference.
So how does this the work of Lago today make a difference?
What is what is successful? I always picture it in a very
simple, you know, in a very simple, in very simple but at
the same time quite ambitious terms.
I have two teenage kids who are 16 and I think 13.
My eldest daughter Bianca, she will vote in a couple of years
and Luca in a few in a few more years.
I picture, you know, a world or a scenario in the local, you
know, in the local voting station, polling station where
Bianca, Luke and their friends will go to vote for the first
time. And what they will have in the
what they will have in their head, the images they will have
in their head, in the sounds they will have in the ears about
who are the people who move and what moving from one place to
another is all about. Is, is, is actually a different
story from the one that dominates our, you know, our,
you know, our understanding and our political campaigns today.
So it is actually the, the impact is to do with the
knowledge, with the understanding and the what is
when, when it is successful is where we create a different
story. Not necessarily a positive
story, mind you, And which is why I actually, I actually don't
see Lago as an organization. It does much advocacy, at least
not in advocacy in the traditional sense that, you
know, in terms of campaigning or public big messages and thinking
about small messages and actually images, words,
vocabularies where we break down the barrier between US and them.
As, you know, ask the people who stay, then the people who move,
which is the first bit of fiction that we alltel each
other because a number of us have moved between places in our
lifetime. And so if, if I create stories
and imagery in future generations, who will determine
the outcomes of elections or, you know, the state of the world
in the future that will understand the reality and the
movement of people as something beautiful, as something normal,
as something that relates to them as well as to others, then
we I would have made a difference.
And I measured lots of things in my life.
And I'm now trying not to get too obsessed with measuring.
But there are things like, like, for example, the key workers,
key workers won a number of awards and then it got exhibited
at the Vienna in Dundee, at the Design Museum in Scotland Design
Museum as part of their post COVID exhibition.
Now, the fact that this story is being told in a museum is
something I never experienced before.
And so measurement wise, the story is now traveling further
afield to places that others didn't get to.
The work that we've done on visas recently has been covered
and continue to discovered on media all around the world is,
you know, is all over the Nigerian media as we speak.
Again, not something I've experienced before.
So there's something about going further afield and lasting
longer. Federica mentioned earlier about
how key workers was updated for years and remained live over the
years. And you know, the work we do now
on visas has a very similar characteristics of being, you
know, being continuously updated and and expanded.
There is something about the, you know, the shelf life and the
miles that these work travels that to me speaks to impact,
speaks to making a difference. Even though I wouldn't permanent
claim that I have necessarily saved lives or made a huge
difference, but we are getting that.
I remember the first time I I saw the potential in in using
the language of data visualization to to help
knowledge and about around topics I cared about was in
Internet 16 when I posted the stories behind the line project.
That was the project about migrants, asylum seekers,
journeys and that was a project without any Commission.
I didn't have a huge following at the time, not at all.
I was really new in the field of design and data visualization.
I just posted it online without any expectations and I was so
impressed by by how much it was shared and appreciated.
I also was intimidated at the time because I was dealing with
a very dramatic and personal topic and personal stories of
these people through data visualization through a language
that is often perceived as cold. And so I was a little bit scary
that people would have wouldn't have understood my intentions,
but they did. And this really moved me.
And then this helped me in bringing this project, you know,
in a lot of events and conferences, conferences that
sometimes were very technical ones, data utilization
conferences, data conferences, design conferences.
But I really wanted to, to push them a little bit more and to
also talk about not only the technical aspects of data
observation design, but also about the stories discontent.
And I something that really impressed me was for instance,
how people were shocked to discover the length of such
journeys. And so this sense of discovery,
this sense of of knowledge, as Marta was mentioning it was very
important to me. And then during the years I've
been working on project on Commission, such as key workers
and other projects I worked on with Marta, but also again on
side projects about topics that I care about.
I also worked especially on social media.
I started working especially for social media, something that at
first I, I didn't do because I was afraid to be accused of
doing performative activism. But then during the years I I
saw the potential in that part too.
And I have to say that when I work on a on a project about a
topic that I care about, human rights issues, gender issues,
and, and I see people, I see that people will share such
projects because in some way they are project, they are topic
they care about. This is something that is very
important to me. Not only letting people discover
something new, but also knowing that people are using my
projects to to talk about something they care about.
It's an aspect that is very important to me.
Maybe sometimes adding their point of view, their perspective
to something that I have done. This for me is the is the impact
I I I hope to work on. That's so, so deep.
And I'm reflecting on what I heard from you both.
And I think the fact that Martha brought how impressed and
surprised she was on how the impact of her of your guys's
work reached places that you didn't even think before.
It's truly inspiring, I find and very relevant.
And I think Federica, I, I actually perceive data
visualization not as cold as you had mentioned, because I do
think that we need more images and that I believe that this is
an alternative way of expressing data and at times even more
democratic. So of course, the type of data
that you both work with is something that you really need
to read and interpret. So there is not, you know, a
quick look, but especially when we're talking about like we're
leaving the year of attention economy, being able to offer new
ways of sharing data, I, I find it very powerful.
Yeah, thank you. And, and and this is also why I,
I try to work on on visual languages that are not
necessarily the most the ones that are most commonly
associated through the deterioration language.
There is this idea that a scatter plot or a bar chart is
immediately understood by everyone, but there are paper
that demonstrate papers that demonstrate how sometimes people
don't know how to read a the more classical representations
because simply because we are not they, we, we don't learn how
to do it in schools. We learn how to, to write and to
count and to and and to and to read, but not to how to read
graphics. And so I think that I also try
to visually experiment, to provide, to work with shapes
that maybe are not so classic. But in some, in some ways I use
organic shapes, I use soft shapes, shapes that can provide
a sense of familiarity, not familiarity with the language of
determination, but familiarity with what surround us more in
general. And it is a way in which I try
to invite people to look at my representations.
Can I actually come back to very quickly on some of the things
that Federica said, particularly about social media and the
previous question about impact I because I genuinely think as you
can imagine, this questions about what difference does this
make? Is, is, is recurrent?
And he's also a little bit a challenge that, you know, there
comes to me particularly in trying to explain why I have
created Lago and why I, you know, I think that this new way
of working is, makes you know, it's, it's better or is, is
worthwhile, you know, and the question is always what
different does it make? And often in relation to, well,
OK, you're producing cute things now, right?
You're you're hanging out with cool people, but you know, you
know, Are you sure this makes this makes a difference because
Federica mentions social media and how her sort of following
has changed. I just want to reflect on also
the power of collaborations. So the idea that somebody like
me and Federica start work together and not just once, but
create, you know, you know, a work in collaboration where, you
know, we for the Rica, for example, has designed the visual
identity of Lago and we have ongoing work.
And the fact that we are here together having this
conversation and that we, you know, we influence each other
as, you know, spheres of influence, like we, we enter
into each other spheres of influence.
It's incredibly powerful because we all talk about how beautiful
collaboration is almost for the sake of it.
But, you know, creating connections between worlds and
people and disciplines that normally wouldn't connect
actually amplifies almost immediately creates new spaces
for for engagement. So I mean, I could never reach
the, the people that Federica reaches on social media by
myself. And, and it is through Federica,
through the work, the, the work, as I said, travel further
afield. And the, the people that we have
in the room in, in, in the, in all other passports event two
weeks ago are people that literally wouldn't meet if there
wasn't an opportunity to connect between, let's call it the world
of sort of international, the international community and
public policy and the world's of design and creativity.
So, you know, when we think about impacting difference, we
always think about projects and products and you know, that are
down the line. But I think we we shouldn't
underestimate the the potential of having created a space where
people have potential to make a difference, come together and
make more of a difference together.
I'm very curious, I think you, you both brought a bit of how
some of the projects that you have worked with started.
I'm also curious to learn more about the what happens before
the data storytelling is built. So the research aspect of it.
And I know that Federica brought initially the, the story behind
the lines example, how the project started, if you can
bring more examples of how other projects started.
So the research aspect of it. And on top of that, I'm also
curious to learn more about I as far as what I have researched of
your projects, it seems that is very quantitative data heavy.
I wonder if you can you also work with qualitative datas and
how how do you choose what's the best method for each project?
I'll, I'll go first. OK.
First of all, a bit like what I said before about advocacy,
partly because this is research has been my, you know, my
national habitat for many years. The first thing that I'm and
then this to me really matters is that I see designers research
as we, you know, I see designers knowledge production.
So in a way the research process does not sort of end when the
design starts is an ongoing is an ongoing process.
And in fact, most of the things that Federica and I have done
together have had that characteristics where they
started with some ideas or indeed some data, but then the,
you know, the, the evolution of the knowledge production and the
data has gone and it hand in hand with the, with the design
process. I think different projects or
different ideas, if initiatives have different origins.
I mentioned, I mean, the the way, for example, the research,
so quote, UN quote happened on key workers because it's hardly,
you know, research and traditional sense was me.
And again, you know, this was it feels like a, you know, a
lifetime ago. But when Twitter was OK and and
worked, it was me putting out a message out there to Twitter
saying I'm interested in stories unfolding about how in different
places in the world, you know, people are adapting and and
responding to creating space for migrant workers to be active
contributors to the emergency response.
This was merely around healthcare and having more
people in in wards, in COVID wards and all of that.
And so that researches links. It was literally a bunch of
links of very obscure articles in a local newspapers somewhere
in Wyoming where, you know, some emergency legislation was passed
to allow asylum seekers who normally, you know, who have a
nursing degree to that, you know, rather than working, say
20 hours a week, they unlock that ban to allow people to work
for longer, for example. So is, I mean, is, is actually
going back to a question about quantitative qualitative was
very qualitative is just stories like literally the equivalent of
cut off. You know, my grandfather would
have, you know, cut it out from from a newspaper.
And so Federica often shows what she received from me from that
work, which is like an excel full of links of stories.
And in fact that never I mean that that became a research in a
traditional way later. So after we did the work with
the data realization and after we started to actually collect
the stories and construct through design our narrative
around the value and contribution of these key
workers. My colleague Claire Kumar here
at ODI afterwards produced a piece of research that went back
looking at what we knew about the role of essential workers in
European economies and how our data visualization became itself
a source of data as a source of stories to be able to do the
research. So that's an interesting example
where, you know, it started with, again, almost like a
desire to tell the story rather than doing the research and then
LED, led to research. And then a more recent example,
the work that we've done together on visas.
Again, it's not necessarily it doesn't start with research, but
it starts with but you know, the the desire to know more and this
you know, it all started when Leslie Loco was curating the
banal of architecture two years ago, the focus on Africa.
And when she mentioned that the opening press conference that a
couple of her colleagues from Accra could not be there on that
day because the Italian ambassador rejected their visa
application. And that's how I started to
wonder about what was going on with visas of people who people
apply for short term tourist business and tourist visas to to
Europe. And yes, that research is, you
know, then went into more of a quantitative direction, looking
at rejection rates and costs, but is now increasingly turning
to the stories behind not this not dissimilar to the ideal
stories behind the line, the stories behind Teresa's
experiences. And in fact, we have recently
produced a short documentary with Rocco radio in a car that
actually captures the individual stories of some of the DJ
residents. So there is a it's definitely a
combination of different kinds of data and research.
And in a way, it starts with understanding or actually comes
in Italian were introvert like seeing in between some spaces a
knowledge gap or you know, something that doesn't adapt.
And from the beginning, almost having design as you know, in
the toolbox to to to then create new knowledge about that, that
lack of knowledge and and lack of data.
And on lack of data, I hand over to Federica because she speaks
wonderfully about the absence of data.
Yeah, absence of data is like a a frustration that I that I have
because there there is this beautiful book that it's data
feminism. And I think it's essential for
people who want to work in in the data visualization field, in
the data field in general, but not only.
And it's all about the power that stands behind data, the
collection of data. Who is collecting them and for
which reasons? And what are the questions that
we me as a bit data design data, the termination designer, but in
general, we people who work with data, what are the question that
we need to ask ourselves before using a certain amount of a
certain kind of data? And also why there are gaps, why
there are missing data and how can we feel the, the silences
that sometimes stands behind those missing information.
And, and this is something that I try to, to overcome sometimes
by telling personal story story. So there is something that I, I
love doing and I would love to keep on doing.
And this is about the part of research.
Then there is thinking about the research part also in terms of
design and languages. There is a project that we've
done together with, with Martha Paresti and once again with Alex
Trechantini for the eye that it's called Art and Mind.
And I really love this project because of the work we have done
on on visual languages. This is a website about public
narratives and attitudes towards refugees and other migrants in
European countries. We visualize data that ODI was
already working on for years. We visualize reports that were
published periodically by by ODI.
The research part behind this project was all about the
languages used to talk about migration.
So with Marta, we had a lot of interesting conversations on how
migration is often perceived, is often displayed through the
metaphors of flows, all these big arrows that are often also
associated with the invasions maps, all the invasion maps, war
maps. And we really wanted to, to
challenge this way of talking about migrations and to find
another visual metaphor completely different from from
these arrows once invasion once. And so we, we created a project
in which the data are visualized through the visual metaphor of
mountains. Because the creation of the
mountains is an inevitable and natural process that is part of
our planet history, such as migration is an an inevitable
and natural process part of our human history.
And the research that we conducted on that, on, on that
design phase was very important because it was really a lot of
research on the languages used, on the metaphors used.
And it is something that I really love working on.
And then with the visa project, we are also working of course
with data analysts. For instance, we are, we have
been collaborating with Automanti Gaza.
Automanti Gaza is a data analyst and we have been working a lot
together on the data that were available about visas inequality
also to find the right angle. Because again in data
visualization, in data in data visualization, there are always
choices to be that we have to do for the collection part, for the
selection part and the visualization part.
And so we have been working a lot together on the angle that
we wanted to use to to to talk about the issue and the topic.
Speaking of this project, the heart and minds, I'm curious.
I know I I've seen it and I know that it's based on European
migration data. Do you have plans on on
expanding it to, for example, US migration data?
Is this part of a plan at some point?
The short answer is no. I often get asked the same
questions in relation to visas and not because we don't want
to, but it is because I mean again in you know, it is sort of
the, the expertise a little bit or the space.
What we worked is very much in, in, you know, in Europe in
relation to the European trends and also particularly my
migration from the, from the neighbouring regions and so from
Africa and Mediterranean region in the Middle East.
We work very closely with colleagues in the US Actually,
the work on Visa was inspired by by a project called Visa Limbo.
There also has a little bit of an element of design that looked
started to monitor the time that it takes for US embassies to
clear visas, which is one of the main issues when it comes to
visas to the US in Europe. We found out, you know, it was
actually more the cost and the rejection rate.
So is, is simply to do with, you know, being realistic.
I mean, I, when I say we don't is that we are, you know, at, at
the moment, we, we're going to focus a little bit on the
certainly from the visa work on, on, on Schengen and, and, and
the UK and on public perception that is as a project is now
finished. But there is sort of ongoing
interest. And again, my colleagues at ODI
who are working mostly on on is actually ODI European Brussels
that covers some of these these issues.
And again, the focus is a little bit on target, particularly with
the new European Commission to try to focus on the future holds
in Europe, giving also, you know, the stability in France
and then particularly the the new Commission and post Ukraine
or or not postal Ukraine. So it's it's just a matter of
continuing to focus on areas where we have more expertise,
but we are very much collaborating and in touch with
colleagues and organizations that do similar work in the US.
The other issue with the, the date with the public perception
work is that it was relying on most existing surveys carried
out in both, you know, in the European in European countries
and then coupled with in country more specific research and
engagement. And in the US is obviously will
you know, it be a bit challenging for us being based
for us being based here. I'm certainly interested in the
movement of people as a global phenomenon.
And I just have, you know, that there is there is a need and a
moment and in fact a real urgency in relation to Africa to
really get Europe to pay more attention given some of the
demographic trends in on both continents.
And so it's something that I, you know, you know, continue to
focus on. But then I said, with plenty of
collaborations across the Atlantic.
I think just to build on Federica, you brought many
examples of forms of design that you take into account when you
are building your, your storytelling, your data
storytelling. So you said about the mountains
in order to be more of an alternative way of not only
showing arrows and so on and what that means in invasion maps
and so on. You also brought the inspiration
on Data Families book. I'm wondering if you can also
share some more like where do you go for inspirations when
when you're making the choices? As you said, no it's always a
trade off. Like what?
What should I choose in order to to represent the data?
I want the best way. If you can share a little bit
more, how do you search for inspiration?
Where do you go? So first of all, when it's a
project on Commission, like I think that the first question I
ask the clients is how experimental do you want to get?
Do you prefer to stick with classical representations?
And I, I do that, of course, I have nothing against classical
graphics. Or do you want to explore
something different? And this is like my main, this
division, this macro division is my first question.
And then when and if they want to experiment a bit more, I
mean, I have this collection of images that I like.
It's cliche, but nature is a huge inspiration of mine.
I have Pinterest boards. I screenshot everything or save
on every possible social media. Every time I see something that
I'm attracted to, I just screenshot it or save it
somehow. Especially images that are not
part of the data visualization world, but that are part of the
nature or art or illustrations. Something that I, I learned to
do was to understand instinctively what are the
shapes, the text of the elements I'm visually attracted to and
how I could use them for my project.
And for me, it's very helpful. First look at the data, look at
the story. And I've been in mind the macro
structure of the data. And so if I have macro
categories, if I have a trend line, So what is the macro, the
skeleton of the data. And then when I look for
inspiration, browsing through my catalogue, I have already mined
the macro shape, the information that it could have, and then I
know where to to look for inspiration.
So I would say I save everything I enjoy.
That's my form of inspiration, my the way which I ended through
exhibitions or vintage books. But I I have to say that having
in mind the structure of the contents is very important to me
because then I understand, I start understanding what kind of
shapes I can go towards. The quick answer is I save
everything I like and then I go through all the things that I've
saved. Yeah, makes sense.
That's that's great. Matt, you mentioned earlier that
your kids will soon start voting and the importance of them
having other stories that they heard or they've seen in regards
of migration. We know that anti migrant
narratives are full of misinformation.
What do you believe is the role of your practice in pushing back
against the public discourse? So what?
What strategies have been most effective?
Thank you. This is a very interesting
question because it also allows me to explain how I, I actually
try to divert a little bit to traditional ways of thinking
about, for example, what do we do about, I mean, ever since I
started working on migration and every conversation, somebody
says, oh, we've got to change the narrative, right?
We, we have, we've got to change and that we do something that is
like, how do we do this? So let's, let's stick with the
with metaphors. And the first thing I said, I
don't push back, meaning that rather than sort of pushing.
So you have this wave of, of lies coming to you.
And as I said in, you know, everything I've experienced
before was a bit like pushing back with a little bit of truth
to try to keep the lies away. There's one thing that I
actually quite enjoy doing is I play a little bit with it.
I play with the fiction so that those lies tell, you know, have
a completely fictional story about what happens to people
when they move. And we pick up this idea of
telling the story and fiction and turn that into something
beautiful and quite counterintuitive about that.
You know, that ugliness, the fear that those that those you
know that that narrative creates and come up.
This is why this idea of the beauty of movement came to me.
It's this idea that you, you know, you you don't, you don't,
you don't push back, but you almost say, you say something
very different and something a little bit unexpected, right?
You throw in, you know, a concept that you will not, you
will not associate with what has been deliberately painted as a
phenomenon of fear, of pain, of desperation, which is, you know,
is a lot of things that are happening.
But at the same time, then they create a sense of impossibility
and a sense of detachment from what you know can, can be done
about it. And the other important thing is
that actually goes back to what Federico was saying a little
about heart and mind, hearts and minds, that project, which of
course is that we know that public, you know, public
perceptions of what's happening are driven by some of these
narratives. They're not necessarily
entrenched. I mean, time and time again,
surveys find that people are far less negative, particularly when
you when you, when you are able to have a a meaningful
conversation and a pragmatic conversation about who migrants
are and people are not. You know, I'm not necessarily
entrenched or negative or against.
And in fact, a lot of the, you know, when, when migration rises
in public opinions and as a as a, as a problem, it normally
goes hand in hand with electoral processes in the UK.
It's fascinating to see what happened around the Brexit
campaign and then all of a sudden people were not worried
about migration anymore. So the first thing to do is to
is, is to be, try to be a little bit smarter hearted and not to,
you know, not to engage in a way or try to, you know, try to
avoid the, the, the, the avalanche of law of lies by sort
of going out the mountain through, you know, a different
path that you know, allows, you know, to slowly but sadly to get
there. To me, what matters more than
anything on coming forward with an alternative to what is the
dominant toxic narrative and the lies rather than trying to fight
something ugly and negative with something positive is to try to
do something different, which is to break down the fundamental
premise of the narrative, which is the other is to be feared
like the other. You know is you know the people
who come your way and you know and under undermine your life or
take away your spaces in your kids school or your you know,
yours, your queue in your space in the line in the queue for for
the doctor almost to create a story about the movement of
people that is, you know, that just elicits a different kind of
imagination. One thing that I often say, just
to give a very comfortable example of what it means is that
imagine how many of us have had some family members in the past
who have moved from, say a village in, you know, somewhere
and perhaps in the countryside and moved to the city to look
for work. Now just imagine that there is a
a fictional border between the countryside and the city.
Like somebody says, you know, from this point on, you're not
allowed. And that's often what this
international migration is about.
But the movement from one place to the next, not out of
desperation, necessarily out of will, out of interest, out of
curiosity is what moved me and what might well be what moved
you, Julia and others to go some places to do something
different. And I want to claim back the
normality, the normality, the the natural aspect, which is one
of the reason why all these non metal, these organic metaphors
that we work with the Federica from trees to mountains to
organic shapes work so well because it comes from within is
a very is a natural and organic sort of response to us as human
beings. So breaking down the barrier
between us and them and creating an artist of us is what I'm
aiming to do, rather than in a way, fight back against the
lies. Thank you for sharing that and
for your important work. It's certainly important to me
personally as an immigrant here in the US and as the grandchild
of refugees that you're addressing this, you know, for
migrants today and, and working on these issues.
And I, I really like this idea of like, rather than just
directly being response, responding all the time to
disinformation and things like that.
It's sounds like almost like like being like water, right?
Like you're kind of redirecting in that sense and really finding
new metaphors as you were saying, like away from these
invasion map kind of scenarios to something that is normalizing
migration because it is just a normal human activity.
So as we wrap up our time together, I have a two-part
question 1 is just about the the future of Lago Collective.
Can you share a preview, whether of an upcoming project or just a
general direction you're going? And then could each of you,
Federica and Marta, share with our listeners, our viewers,
something that you want to recommend to them?
It could be a piece of media, yeah, could be a project,
something that you haven't done, but it could be a book, a movie,
anything else, just to recommend to her audience.
OK, the future of Lago. Let me again use a metaphor, the
visual one, Lego came from a place of curiosity from me,
right as I almost saw there is almost imagine you're walking to
say London or a city or New York City where the, you know, where
there's not much space to build new things and almost like
walking down the street and I saw like a little space in the
corner at the end of the street. They looked like something could
be built there in between other buildings, like an awkward
space. And so let me try to see if I
can build something there. Anyway, it's sort of two years
later. There is now there is now a
building there of some kind. No, there is some foundations
and, and something has happened. And so, you know, it's
interesting when you create a new organization, become an
entrepreneur, there are all these expectations about, you
know, scaling up in size. And I go back to the fact that I
want to make a difference in my own way.
And so the future of Lago is to build an owl on these
foundations. I feel very, very strong to me.
There is I have no doubt. And in a way, this conversation
is just an example that we are creating.
We're, you know, we're this house is becoming a place for
people to come and have conversations and drinks and
parties. People are coming along from
different, from different disciplines and, and in fact is
a bit bigger than I thought the, the space.
And so what's happening now is, is, is building on that.
And so the, the main thing that is you know, that to be expected
is that again, going back to this idea of staying with an
issue over time and make it travel a little bit further
along the lines is that this work on visa inequality has only
just started. We're lucky that this is an area
where some data is published every year, so expect sort of
the launch of the next phase in late spring.
And we also have support to actually expand the work to
begin to build archives of individual stories and create
more performances and more beautiful work out of the
research and the data, but to really address this fundamental
issue of passport inequality. And in fact, today is more, you
know, interesting than ever because we just had the
announcement of the first African woman being the curator
of the next art Vianali in two in a year and a half time where
so Africa continues to be there at the heart of of, you know,
after the last couple of years of the Vianali.
And so that's a perfect sort of moment in time to really make
sure that we've addressed some of those issues because
otherwise a lot of the African artists that are going to have
their work at the Vianali might not be able to to be there.
So that's a little bit longer longer term.
We do have something, you know a couple of exciting things coming
up around El Salona design week in, in, in in the spring.
And then there is also a moment of interest for the economy.
We can tell you more about as the three and Ally in Milan this
year, we'll focus on inequality. And so we're also thinking about
sort of engaging with this debate in the design space where
inequality is becoming of increasing interest.
And then let me go back to my old world, the world of the
international mutant policy making.
Even before we get to the next RB and Ally, which we'll focus
again on Africa. There is the G20 in South Africa
in a year's time, which is a really, you know, comes after
Indonesia and Brazil. So it's got, you know, high
expectations on countries, on sort of low and middle income
countries driving a little bit the agenda.
The African Union is now a permanent member of the G20.
So I love the world we do, particularly with cities and on
particularly on urban economy and creative economy in Africa
has a moment of engagement around the G20.
So the horizon is, you know, I take less, I'll take the next
RBN ally as the medium horizon. We're going to try to rebalance
visa inequality between now and then, with a particular focus on
creatives from Africa who really are disproportionately affected
by passport inequality as we speak.
And all along we'll work together with Federica and
others to really make sure that design continues to drive the
way we think about the solutions.
My recommendations I OK, I have one exhibition and two films.
I'm a film person. I love going to the cinema.
I love to go to cinema and by myself during the day when I can
I love that too. 2 films. Fremont That was a 2023 film
that tells the story of an Afghani refugee in a small city
in the US. And it's beautiful because it
challenges so many misconceptions about who a
refugee is and what an Afghani woman looks like and does, and
then connects it to the experience of long term Chinese
migrants in the US. And I think it's one of the most
beautiful things I've seen on migration for a long time.
And then Anatomy of a Fall, because it speaks to women and
relationship with men in particular in a way that really
resonates with my experience. And then finally, I need to just
double check to make sure I get the title right.
I actually bumped into an exhibition last week.
I was in Rome and I went to the Maxi, to the Museum of
Contemporary Art, mainly because I wanted to see the, I've never
been to the building. I want to see the Zaidade
building and there is an exhibition called The Restless
Architecture by dealers Caffeine and Renfro.
So very much coming from a design space that basically
focuses on movement and architecture, and it
investigates movement as an internal property of
architecture. Buildings that change their
configuration, have mobile elements and swell or turn to
welcome visitors. And I never thought about
movement in architecture. And in fact, architecture is
very much something that, you know, creates things that don't
move. And I thought it was beautiful
curator, which is actually quite rare for museums in Rome.
And I found it really inspiring. And so go see it.
Wonderful, Federica. There are new angles I would
love to work on and we will work on new angles about visas and
visual inequality. I want to talk about with Lago
and it is something that Martin and I want to do in the next, in
the next months. As she mentioned, I'm
collaborating as a independent designer in that case with for
the journaling division that it would be all around the
inequalities topics and all the possible aspects, angles from
which to serve the inequality subject.
And, and then I, I love designing to, to talk about
topics, but then I also love to talk about design, to talk about
topics. So I love to talk about my
designs to, to tackle issues and, and topics.
And so it's something that I'm going to do very gladly with
Marta and Lago. Speaking about inspirations,
there is a book that inspired, it's one of the things that
inspired me the most in the last months.
It's not a design related book is the source of self regard
that it's a selection of essays by and speeches by Tony Morrison
and it's beautiful. Of course, the essays and the
speeches are incredibly brilliant.
And there is a quote that I there is a sentence that I
always love to quote, and it's about the repercussions of a
rigid and unchanging language and Tony Morrison abroad however
moribund it is not without effect, for it actively towards
the intellect stores conscience, suppresses human potential and
receptive to interrogation. It cannot form or tolerate new
ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, feel
baffling silences. She was talking about Britain
and spoken language here, of course.
But I think, I really think that the same concepts can be applied
to my visual languages, to the languages of design and
visualization. And so this is something that I
really love quoting every time I can.
Wonderful. What a beautiful way to close us
out with Toni Morrison, Federica Fragapane, and Marta Foresti.
Thank you for joining us on the EIG Design Podcast and thank you
for tuning in. You can listen and subscribe to
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We'll see you in a future episode.