Episode 122: At Arm’s Length

This week Jessica and Michael talk about how life is starting to change with the COVID-19 outbreak arriving in the United States, from cancelled vacations to remote work, and to the ways people seek what Jessica calls “visual graphic reassurance.”

Looking at Luō Dàwèi’s One Thousand Families, a collection of intimate portraits taken by families in China under quarantine, Jessica says,

During times of crisis, people want to make things. There’s a surge in the keeping of journals when there’s a war… it’s a response to the feeling of vulnerability, like corporeal vulnerability. My life is under attack. I am imprisoned in my house. I have to make something to say I was here, to say I mattered, to say this day happened… It’s like visual graphic reassurance. -Jessica

Also mentioned this week:

• Carl Bergstrom Twitter thread on the social distancing infographic
• Here Is New York: Photographs from 9/11
• Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE
• Scott Klein, ProPublica, Infographics in the Time of Cholera
• Vietnamese Health Dept, Jealous Coronavirus about washing hands 
• Poster House, The Swiss Grid, through August 23
• Grant Cardone, The Job Interview
• Zander Brade, Monzo, How we hire product designers
• Nick Clement’s tweet about the Monzo hiring process and Michael’s reply
• Ben Brooks, Marsh, Measuring Internal Social Media — 90/9/1 Rule,
• Steven Heller, Design Observer, The Plot Against America 
• Eric Rosenberg Design
• Joanne McNeil, Lurking

Subscribe to The Observatory on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or follow Design Observer on Spotify or Soundcloud.