About

I am a New York-based designer, creative director, and artist working at the intersection of data visualization, architecture, and conceptual art.

I began my career in architecture, earning a Master's in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, where I was awarded the Kinne Fellows Prize. Following my studies, I was working with the visionary architectural firm Asymptote and in 2003 joined the Strategic Architecture Group at the New York Stock Exchange/SIAC.

In 2005, I founded **2n**, an award-winning, New York-based data visualization design studio. My work at 2n has earned numerous awards, including a Gold Medal at the Information is Beautiful Awards, four Awards for Design Excellence from Communication Arts magazine, as well as multiple Webby Awards. In the spring of 2024 I joined [M2X](https://m2x.energy/), a startup in the renewable energy space, as their Director of Data Tools, overseeing a number of initiatives for this startup.

Beyond my design practice, I am an artist, curator, and a founding member of the ABC Artists' Books Cooperative. My artistic projects often explore information aesthetics, the history of photography, and issues of copyrights and appropriation. In 2013, I co-authored [Various Small Books](#/vsb/about) (MIT Press), a homage to the artist books of Ed Ruscha. I subsequently co-curated the major exhibition Ed Ruscha – Books & Co., which traveled to the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, as well as the Museum Brandhorst in Munich.

My work has been exhibited internationally, including at the [Rencontres d'Arles](#/arl/about), the FoMu Antwerp, the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona, Printed Matter in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Offprint Paris, and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Berlin.

**Working for:** I have been fortunate to work with individuals who entrusted me through commissions or collaborated directly with my studio. More than just clients, I deeply value these individuals as both mentors and friends:

**Dror Segal**, who I have met working for Asymptote on the Marketrac Website, hired me in 2003 to join the Strategic Architecture Group at the New York Stock Exchange. A true visionary if there ever was one, Dror talked about data visualization and graphic user interfaces before anyone else I knew. I learned a lot within the environment he had created that emphasized curiosity, experimentation and prototyping. Working for him also led to my first big commission: the redesign of the NYSE Trading Floor Displays.

**Ted Merz** hired me to design and build a data visualization editor for Bloomberg Briefs. There was no precedence for the kind of SaaS viz tool we set out to create. Tableau Online would not be available for two more years. D3.js – which we utilized for our tool – had only just been launched by Mike Bostock, and the official launch of the Observable Platform in early 2018 was a full 7 years away. We started work without an official contract, just a handshake. There are not that many Ted’s in Corporate America.

**Sam Jones** found me via my Stockmapper site, which had been included in the list of Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2010. We ended up creating multiple websites and apps for the various businesses Sam had started. A real entrepreneur and dreamer at heart, Sam kept on pushing me to great heights. He provided an ecosystem of talented people and big ideas, dreaming up business ideas as we went. There was not a single moment we spent together that I wasn’t in awe of his relentless energy and vibe.

**Working with:** Building 2n required a unique blend of technical expertise and creative passion, and I have been incredibly fortunate to work alongside people who embodied both. The following individuals were instrumental in defining our studio's culture and success through their exceptional talent and dedication.

**Amit Schechter** is by far the most talented creative technologist I had the pleasure to work with. We first met while working for Asymptote, and we joined forces again a few years later under Dror’s leadership at the NYSE. In 2012 he joined me at **2n**, and for the next six years we grew the agency together and created some of the most successful projects to come out of the studio. We had a slightly different daily rhythm, as he was often working late into the night, and hated the morning hours. I forever miss the moments where he would show me what he had been working on while burning the midnight oil. [meetamit.com](https://meetamit.com/)

**Paul Dechov** was among the initial hires at the studio; an engineer who perfectly embodied the creative ethos I sought to cultivate. Paul was an introvert and recluse while also being fiercely collaborative, bridging the gap between developers and designers. Few people I worked with were able to deliver pixel-perfect results like Paul. Every line of code he wrote produced moments of surprise and delight. [dechov.com](https://dechov.com/)

**Alec Barrett** joined in a junior position and left three years later as our Lead Developer. He was our resident political analyst and commentator with a seemingly endless knowledge of the electoral system. This was particularly handy, since he was leading the development of Steve Kornacki’s Big Board. But most importantly he mentored the next wave of creative technologists in the studio and was a patient teacher to us all.

**Ellie Frymire** joined **2n** and the vibe – and music – in the studio changed overnight. Her positive energy was unmatched. Her curiosity for design, coding, and life was more than contagious to everyone around her. I hired her based on her strong thesis project, and she exceeded my expectations by a solid mile. Her fingerprints are over all projects we worked on together, and she is one of the few people whose design input I would seek (and take). When it was time for Elli to move on I made her walk out the door playing “All you had to do was stay”. She's the one who got away. [elliefrymire.com](https://elliefrymire.com/)

**Aucher Serr** came highly recommended (Ellie!) and little did I know she was the ying to Ellie's yang. It was immediately clear that there was no challenge Aucher didn’t look forward to conquering. “I can’t” was not part of her vocabulary and she never overpromised or underdelivered. The MTA project won her and the studio a more than deserved gold medal at the Information is Beautiful Awards 2022. [aucherserr.com](https://www.aucherserr.com/)

**2n Alumni** Amit Schechter, Adam Krebs, Alec Barrett, Angela Denny, Anton Kulikov, Aucher Serr, Chia-Yen Hung, David Malary, EJ Fox, Ellie Frymire, Erica Hyman, Eva Sibinga, James Proctor, Jasmine Guy, John Halloran, Katrin Bichler, Mia Szarvas, Monroe Getz, Natalie Erdem, Parker Kaufmann, Paul Dechov, Sepand Ansari, Sofy Yuditskaya, Travis Shepard, Ivy Zheyu Chen

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