Originally posted on LinkedIn.

In grad school at Columbia, I took a course on international investigations using data. The course was designed around shipping, and I still remember oddly specific things from that time: IMO numbers, flags, bill of ladings and other random things that I have still never used after that.

When I became a journalist, the same thing happened over and over. Every beat came with its own vocabulary, incentives, and logic. Pollution taught me how to think about PM2.5. Elections taught me how to read swings and margins. Bollywood introduced me to the Bechdel test. Most stories were about understanding something new.

Running an information design studio is the same. People sometimes ask how we can be “domain agnostic.” We’ve worked across climate, finance, economics, education, sociology, and health. The honest answer is: we’re not domain experts. We’re experts in learning a domain quickly enough to explain it responsibly.

A teammate said today:

“Information design means filling your brain with so many different things… In no parallel universe did I imagine that I will have to understand procurement processes.”

And someone else on the team something similar couple of weeks ago:

“Sometimes I don’t even think I’m a designer. My job is just to understand how the world works.”

Our method is simple, not easy. Curiosity first, then immersion. Reading, research, endless “how does this actually work?” questions. Brain dumps. Synthesis. And the final question — can we explain it back in plain language without flattening the truth?

The work may look like design. Most days, it just feels like learning and understanding.