The Art of Insight

Chapter 20The Determined Learner

with Jane Pong

Figure 20.1: “Stars of the screen” by Jane Pong / South China Morning Post

https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/SCMP-printed-graphics-memory/lonelyGraphics/201302A283.html / last accessed June 19, 2023.

Authentic living isn't judged by whether you are successful or not. Authenticity flowers in making intentions and in following through with actions. Authenticity is a process of boldly embracing our freedom, resolutely striding into life, and creating our essence and the world around us. When we set off on a quest to live authentically, we affirm freedom for ourselves and others. We create a world worth living in.

—Skye C. Cleary

Back in 2012, Jane Pong designed the graphic that led to her first job in visualization—Figure 20.1 is a polished version of it, published a year later. Her career began, of all places, at a Starbucks in Hong Kong:

I had recently quit my job for reasons that we can talk about later. At the Starbucks where I was sitting, there was a copy of the South China Morning Post [one of Hong Kong's main newspapers]. I picked it up and began casually leafing through it. And there it was, a data visualization! It was a very clear moment in my mind where it was like, “Wait a minute, this is exactly what I want to do, and there are other people already doing it here in Hong Kong.”

There was a tiny byline ...