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Ben Fry is a data visualization expert and principal of Fathom Information Design, a design and software consultancy in Boston. He received his PhD in Computational Information Design from the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. He also co-developed Processing, which he has received awards for.
Fry’s work focuses on data visualization as a means to help audiences understand and digest dense amounts of information. I really admire Fry’s portfolio because his visualizations are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also manipulate complex information to be easily digestible.
I was particularly interested in No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project. It visualizes over 850,000 data points from the last twenty years on gains women and girls have made around the world in terms of health, education, economic participation and social inclusion. As a woman myself, visually seeing what kinds of progress we have made in different sectors really inspired me.
Fry not only effectively visualizes data but also effectively discusses it as well. He thoroughly explains the background to his work as well as the actual work itself by going through it with the audience, giving them that comprehensive understanding that I want my work to have too.