Blog 08: Manuel Lima

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

Manuel Lima is a Portuguese-American designer and author who is known for transforming informational data into various elegant and beautiful forms of art. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Industrial Design at the Technical University of Lisbon and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Design and Technology from the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Lima’s website, Visual Complexity, illustrates his vast portfolio of detailed and intricate artwork, which I find very appealing to the eye. His work often uses a lot of curves and lines, which is made up of many different colors. Yet, each piece of art represents some different form of data. For example, his piece “Marvel Uberframework” (see below) represents the correlation of different Marvel characters, such as Spiderman and Captain America.

However, his most well-known and complex artwork can be found in his literary work, “The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge”. As mentioned in his 2017 lecture, Lima shows various artwork pieces represented in many circular forms that comes from any form of data, ranging from ancient to contemporary times. I love how in his lecture, Lima mentions the bridge of knowledge from thousands of years ago to the present, which keeps our well-established society going. He also emphasizes the importance of creating new artwork using data, that can be passed down to future generations.

Link to Lima’s website:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/