“I love any conversation about a project that starts with: 'I'm not sure if this can be done, but…'” he says in the podcast. Thorp and his co-founders only work with a limited number of clients, and he quips that he doesn't like to take on projects that are too straight-forward or are easily done by anyone in the business. Rather, he advises potential clients that he'd rather they go with a different company if they can think of 100 other people who could accomplish the task at hand. “If it's a job that you can't think of anybody else who can do it—then it's probably something we can help you with,” says Thorp. “It sounds really cliche but I guess our bottom line choice about a project is [whether] this project is going to, in some way, make the world a better place.”
As he explained in the podcast (which was filmed in The Office for Creative Research's new location), there are a lot of different ways to make a good living using data visualization tools. There is a great deal of potential, he says, for what we can create when we organize the abundance of data at our fingertips. In his fascinating keynotes, Thorp argues that data is so much more than just numbers and figures. In fact, the human experience is at the very heart of our data. And, with the right techniques, we can create beautiful and informative visualizations that humanizes data and changes the way we see the world.
