To find out how the creator of the widely popular charts and graphs is doing at the moment, Bored Panda reached out to Matt Shirley for an interview. “It's actually quite difficult to keep up with current events that might make for good charts without it driving me crazy,” he told us when asked how he keeps his charts ever-relevant.
“I tend to not pay attention to the news too awfully much because I find that it's not exactly great for my mental health, so I have to pick and choose the types of current events I talk about with my charts,” Matt explained.
“In general,” Matt said, “I like to do things that are light-hearted so it's natural that some of the more light-hearted news stories are right up my alley. And then, of course, I can always draw off my own experiences, whether it's working from home or dealing with isolation or my thoughts on anxiety.”
When Matt started his Instagram account @mattsurelee, he was doing charts on white boards. “This worked great at first, but eventually I found that I would often make mistakes that were almost impossible to fix on a white board and I moved to more graphic design charts.”
The graphic design charts gave him the flexibility to do multiple drawings in a day and reuse the templates, “so I don't have to measure and draw the same pie charts or tables over and over again.” Plus, Matt likes the variety of colors he can use digitally.
“I absolutely didn't expect anything when I started. But it's very nice to find out that other people see the world in the same way I do,” Matt said humbly.
Incredibly, just like on the day he started, Matt is still making at least one graph per day. “If these charts see the light of day is another story. A lot of them turn out to be not up to snuff and are hidden away somewhere on my computer,” he added.
Also, Matt’s amazing book “A Visual Learner's Guide to Being a Grown-Up” has just come out like a day ago, giving his fans a real treat in Matt’s signature tables, lists, and charts for all the visual learners out there. Check it out right here.
“Additionally, I am in the very beginning stages of working on an idea for a board game and have a couple of new Instagram accounts that should come out soon,” Matt said, so stay tuned!
