I feel a little bit like a data impostor, because when I look at large sets of data it’s overwhelming so I’m impressed with real data people. Michelle Rial: I wanted to be a data person for a really long time, and in the past I gravitated toward those huge “by the numbers” infographics and gradually moved toward using data components to tell a tiny story.

Maybe This Will Help is available for pre-order now, with an expected release date in mid-October.Ĭlaire Santoro: Both your books are full of charts-do you think of yourself as a data person? What draws you to charts? (You can read Nightingale’s Q&A with Michelle about her first book here.) If you are a person who (1) loves charts, (2) particularly loves funny charts, and (3) can relate to Going Through Some Stuff, then this book probably needs to be on your reading list.įor more on the behind-the-scenes process, I reached out to Michelle her responses to my questions are below. And it is-but what I was not expecting were the deeply personal essays that elevate it from a clever coffee table book to something more thought-provoking and more, well, helpful. It’s a book that feels like a hug from a friend: understanding and encouraging, but not self-serious.īased on Michelle’s first book of charts, Am I Overthinking This?, and the teaser images I had seen on social media, I expected Maybe This Will Help to be another wryly funny book of cleverly-designed graphics. Michelle’s book offers that by being simultaneously lighthearted – even joyful and funny! – and contemplative. So while illustrator and information designer Michelle Rial’s new book Maybe This Will Help is not about the pandemic – it’s about her own struggles with chronic pain and grief – it feels like it’s arrived at exactly the right moment. Maybe that’s dealing with illness (your own or that of loved ones), frustrations of working from home, frustrations of not being able to work from home, burnout from trying to parent while working, or just exhaustion from 18 months of stress and disruption. If there’s one thing that the last 18 months have shown us, it’s that we are all Going Through Some Stuff.

Am i overthinking this michelle rial