Tracking Pre-Pandemic “Lasts” and Post-Lockdown “Firsts”

For the print version of the NY Times from this past Sunday, information designer Giorgia Lupi created a hand-drawn visualization that “tracks the last time [she] did something before the pandemic hit, and the first time she did something new with social distancing”.

Our lives have been transformed during the Covid-19 pandemic as the activities we used to do every day have been put on hold and new, socially distanced routines have taken their place. Pentagram partner Giorgia Lupi documents these changes in her own life in a data visualization commissioned by The New York Times for the cover of its “At Home” section, which runs as part of the newspaper’s Sunday edition. The hand-drawn visualization is a personal timeline that tracks the “last” time Giorgia did something before the pandemic hit, and the “first” time she did something new as she started to emerge from lockdown.

Not hand-drawn, but I remember pretty clearly what my lasts were:

• Last movie (w/ kids): Onward in mid-March
• Last movie (solo): Portrait of a Lady on Fire in mid-March
• Last visit to NYC: late October 2019
• Last trip: Vietnam/Singapore/Qatar in Jan/Feb 2020
• Last restaurant (solo): a forgettable ramen place in Burlington in mid-March
• Last restaurant (w/ a friend): better local ramen place in early March
• Last cocktail bar: Bar Stories in Singapore in early February
• Last museum: Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar in early February

I don’t remember my firsts as well, although one that sticks out is eating french fries (take-out) in July. On a normal day, french fries are delicious but when you haven’t had them in months, they are otherworldly.

• Covid-19
• design
• Giorgia Lupi
• infoviz