Visualizing a Decade of Design by Datadot Estudio

We are an information design studio based in Brazil that turned 10 in 2024. To celebrate our history, we designed and developed an interactive visual experiment that allows people to explore our journey.

To begin with, the project started with a series of immersion workshops with our team. This phase was important for exploring different possibilities and ideas that would guide the project’s definition. By the end of this phase, we had an initial understanding of the project’s requirements and potential approaches.

Next, as we designed the visualization, we decided that each node would represent a project deliverable—such as animations, websites, infographics etc—and that combining different variables would give each node unique visual features. In parallel, we organized a database of all the projects we completed over those ten years and defined the categories and variables that we could use.

As designers, we wanted to present complexity in a way that inspires people visually and enables them to explore our information from multiple perspectives. Additionally, the interface supports different ways of interpreting the data. For example, filters let users view quantitative information while also navigating and selecting categories for each unit. Moreover, there are various ways to reframe the visualization and add new layers of information, such as linking units that belong to the same client.

Still, we found inspiration in our team mates' passion for music, which felt like an invitation to explore a way of communicating the melodies and rhythms embedded in this history. Through a series of playful meetings, we expanded the experience by introducing a "play my vis" function, experimenting with data sonification and allowing also our history to get into users' ears.

This approach encourages curiosity and invites users to engage with our story not just visually, but also by sound. Through these tools, our decade of work becomes a rich exploration for everyone.