Friendship, postcards, and drawing life in data
Dear Data: Singapore & Melbourne edition
MEL
About the project
Dear Data is a data-drawing project originally created by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, who would collect a week's worth of personal data, draw the data on a postcard, and send it to each other as pen pals!
This project, however, is made by us—Charlene (Singapore-based data journalist) and Jo (Melbourne-based Data Garden Co. founder).
In 2024, after a coffee first-meet-up where we shared our love for all things data viz, we decided to embark on a 6-month long Dear Data friendship of our own! Like Giorgia and Stef, we tracked our lives' data from a week in each month (based on the month's theme), visualised the data by hand-drawing on A5 postcards, and sent it to each other, forming the start of a data-rich friendship! See our postcards below, and we hope you learn something new.
- Jo & Charlene
We collected and drew our data based on a week of…
Our rules
1
Track/record your data for a week based on the month's decided theme.
2
Draw a visualisation of your data on a blank postcard.
3
On the other side of the postcard, provide an index for how to read your data drawing.
4
Mail your postcard by the 21st of each month to give it enough time to reach each other.
5
No rules on drawing tools: You can use pencils, pens, markers, highlighters, paint, combination of any!
Or even more tactile materials such as beads, leaves, flower petals!
6
Your viz must fit the A5 or A6 postcard!
Our inspiration!
Additional Attributions:
MapSVG • Vecteezy • Wikimedia Commons
Join our
Data Crafting Club
Interested in being part of a data viz and craft-loving club? Charlene and Jo are currently forming a Data Crafting Club based in Melbourne: A monthly meet-up where we create data drawings and crafts!
More details to come, but if you want to join the fun, sign up below!
