The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the largest technical organization in the world, connecting more than 500,000 innovators worldwide. Through a network of volunteers and members, IEEE supports research, conferences, and standards development to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. Each year, IEEE also administers the world's preeminent engineering awards. 

This year, Pentagram was invited to create a data-driven animation and custom award plaques celebrating the 2026 Honoree class—including innovators Jensen Huang (Founder and CEO, NVIDIA), Luis von Ahn (CEO and Co-founder, DuoLingo), and Marian Croak (VP of Engineering, Google). 

Led by Pentagram Partner Giorgia Lupi, this data-driven story builds from one personal anecdote—a moment of curiosity striking engineer Toshio Fukuda in the 1980s—to a collective narrative that highlights the commonalities, collaborations, and breadth of this cohort’s contributions. Data is the entry point to its design, but the outcome is a hand-crafted visual story that highlights the human connections essential to innovation. An IEEE motherboard reveals itself in the video, imagining the organization as an essential network of knowledge and resources, shaping the journeys of engineers across the globe.

The Pentagram team began with a deep dive into each honoree’s background, distilling thousands of data points into robust individual profiles for each honoree. They then categorized the honorees by type of award, location, area of impact, institutional affiliation, and number of conferences attended. They also incorporated personal anecdotes from the honorees about pivotal moments in their careers, advice from mentors, and critical collaborators. Each arrangement of the group highlighted a different perspective to their collective journeys and individual relationships, revealing a number of thematic throughlines: curiosity, collaboration, mentorship, and philosophical viewpoints. In this findings phase, Lupi analyzed IEEE’s data to develop comprehensive story beats that highlight the humanity in innovation.

Lupi and her team developed three scripts and design directions, each approaching the narrative arc with a different framework. Homing in on the theme of intersections, Lupi and her team utilised the metaphor of a motherboard to articulate moments of connection and collaboration between the honorees. Each honoree’s journey is represented by a “trace”—a line connecting different motherboard components. Zooming in on Lupi’s world, these traces row through ponds, go to space, and intersect to illustrate significant partnerships. They come together to reveal an ever-expanding exchange of research, ideas, and disciplines. 

The video premiered on April 24, 2026 at IEEE’s Honors Ceremony in Midtown, Manhattan. As the marquee event of the evening, it served as an introduction to the exceptional technological contributions of the brightest minds in a generation. The connections between the 2026 honorees are one small node in a larger network that stretches across generations. The IEEE community is the connecting thread of this network, equipping engineers with resources to transform their curiosity for the world into breakthrough innovations.