“This is a beautiful portrayal of a terribly unfortunate physical experience. A masterful use of data visualizations combined with long-form writing.” —Mikell Fine Iles
“A stunning example of how heavy topics can be handled with grace and clarity, making the experience informative and visually appealing. The data is presented beautifully, adding depth to the essays.” —Zorani Sanabria
Overview: While most people recover from a COVID-19 infection as though it were a bad cold, others develop debilitating symptoms and lingering infections that continue for months or years. Giorgia Lupi, partner at Pentagram in New York, was one of the unlucky ones who developed long COVID and still struggles with the effects of this disease. While receiving treatment and undergoing medical tests, Lupi began creating data visualizations to track her symptoms for physicians and subsequently created this visual essay for the New York Times to convey the experience of long COVID.
Comments by Giorgia Lupi:
What is the design thinking behind your data visualizations in 1,374 Days? “The piece starts with warm colored brushstrokes that surround the title: ‘1,374 Days: My Life with Long Covid.’ As you scroll through the essay, these brushstrokes begin to interact with the text, and you start to understand that every colored stroke represents one type of symptom, and the brushstrokes aggregate by days. Samples of my blood work and tests pile up, and as you keep scrolling, a body figure gets overwhelmed with all the disparate types of symptoms I’ve experienced in the last almost four years.
“Finally, you piece it all together when you encounter a visual calendar of the four years. The calendar fills with these colored brushstrokes and, on top of them, all the other symbols. A few handwritten annotations contextualize what happened to me—my vaccines, reinfections and so on—ultimately seeing that for some, the calendar of our lives changed drastically after COVID.”
What was the goal you were trying to convey in the visual essay? “Long COVID affects an estimated 65 million people around the world, yet there is still minimization for sufferers as they interact with their doctors and other professionals in the medical field. I came down with COVID-19 in March 2020 when the pandemic arrived in New York. Three-and-a-half years and two subsequent infections later, I still have daily symptoms that range from fatigue, nausea and dizziness to severe headaches and nerve pain that make it difficult to function. I started to log data not only to understand correlations but also to keep me sane in a time of suffering and uncertainty. I continue to track my symptoms every day as I look forward to a time when recording this data is no longer necessary.”
