When the Data is Gone
Last week, I published my first digital article for Nightingale in well over a year. This article not only marked a fresh publishing milestone, but represents the sparks of a newly-found interest.When I started working as a freelancer in 2015, I focused on social media management. I was still in community college and used it as both a way to keep fuel in my gas tank but also directly apply some classroom teachings as a communications studies major. If you asked me then where I saw myself in 10 years, I would have said as a social media manager for a notable brand like Arby’s. In hindsight, they’re still doing inspirationally creative work, though no longer where I see myself. 2025 will hold my 10-year anniversary of freelancing, and while the clients and work I perform have drastically changed, what inspired me to start has yet to dissipate—in fact, it’s only grown since—storytelling.
In community college, I learned the foundations of communication theory—how we tell stories and engage with individuals and groups of people ranging in backgrounds. As I carried on to receive my bachelor’s in public relations, learning not only how people engage with each other, but with businesses and brands. After taking a few years off of school, deciding on what and where to study felt like the next natural thing to pursue. It’s funny to say this now, and seasoned veterans of data visualization chuckle when I tell them this, but I discovered data viz from TikTok.
I stumbled across a Federeca Fragapane TikTok and had never seen anything like it. I was a storyteller of words—written and spoken—what was this visual aspect for storytelling I had not yet seen? This wasn’t graphic design or branding, I had built portfolio pieces by the dozen by that point. This was communicating data, complex information, and making it not only accessible but engaging—these were works of art, not simply bar charts. I needed to learn more. Most surprisingly, less than two years after seeing that TikTok, I had a master’s degree in the subject matter.
Now, bringing this back to my most written article: Since graduating from MICA, I have attempted to find my niche in the already niche field of data viz. I was not educated in the space of BI or coding-based analysis, and while I continued to work on more design-oriented data viz, I found myself returning to academia and wanting to pursue research. There’s just something about academia.
Lately, I have found myself writing more about open access and multi-generational communication. The latter especially has put me rooms with some life-long leaders of the subject matter, like Jon Lomberg, the Creative Director of the NASA Voyager Golden Record and Carl Sagan’s long-time creative collaborator whose work hangs both in the Smithsonian and my office. This concept of communicating across multiple generations, 10,000 years and beyond—removing language barriers and using the foundations of communication—has paired almost exceptionally well with my personal vision for more open access knowledge. It leads me to an intersection where I can pair data visualization and find it’s Venn Diagram center comprising of data (open access knowledge) and visual communication (multi-generational problems).
Despite beginning to lock down more on a niche, I still have a long way to go, many people to talk to and learn from, and more communities to engage with. Thankfully, Bluesky’s sudden surge in users has brought back social communities like Twitter once used to, especially for academics. I am not an academic, nor am I a computer coder to understand more of the technical aspects of what data archival looks like, but I’m prepared to learn.
As companies like Microsoft continue to develop Project Silica, and so long as practitioners and researchers like Jon Lomberg and William Lidwell continue to develop multi-generational visual communication, I can continue to pursue areas of communication which interest me.