A world–famous museum overhauls its annual reporting and portrays the progress and setbacks of a historic year. — Normally, March and August are the busiest months of the year for Turin’s Egypt Museum. That wasn’t the case in 2020. Like many organizations dependent on tourism, Museo Egizio shifted its focus to digital outreach and engagement during the pandemic, and carried on with day–to–day operations (including, impressively, the international…

A veteran Accurat designer shares lessons learned from years of experience. — I started working at Accurat as a data visualization designer back in 2013, when we were about ten people gathered around one big desk and most projects were all hands on deck. As the company grew and we took on more clients — and bigger ones — I took on…

Three projects show how data powers online preservation initiatives. — Archive–building might not initially spring to mind as a data project. But record–keeping and cataloguing methods are often held together by numbers–based logic. Think of the Dewey Decimal System: A numerical series that categorizes books and organizes libraries. We have helped a number of organizations build digital hubs from analogue…

We illustrate one reason why there are so many Virgos, Libras, and Scorpios out there. — Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have confirmed that spikes in hormonal activity are correlated to seasonality—or, as they put it in a peer–reviewed article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: The gland masses grow with a timescale of months due to…

Chatting with three interns turned full–time, full–stack developers. — Many Accurat interns graduate to full–time status. In a new series, we interview colleagues who began working at Accurat as students. First up are developers Stefano Gallo (who joined May 2018), Ilaria Venturini (September, 2018) and Ivan Rossi (February, 2019). All came to Accurat from the University of Milan. Interested…

In a data–driven artwork, a legend takes on special significance. — Two years ago this month, we were commissioned to create a piece for the Triennale Milano XXII. Titled Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, the 2019 edition showcased imaginative solutions for navigating a new world affected by climate change. Our contribution — The Room of Change — was a…

LEGO Architecture, visualized. — The Mondrian-esque composition above more than just resembles an abstract work of art. Its neat lines and symmetry belie grand ideas and microscopic details—in this case, of LEGO sets inspired by architecture. The data visualization effectively color–codes kits from 2008 through 2020 to show hues present in models of landmarks…

A few personal thoughts about the Visualized conference — Last Saturday –March 11th– I had the opportunity to talk on behalf of Accurat at the Visualized conference in Milan about the relationship and dialogue between designers and developers in our projects. As the dust settled, I wanted to write down a couple of things about the relationship and dialogue…

On March 11th we had the chance to give a speech on a subject we are really passionate about, the struggling — but sometimes loving — relationship between Designers and Developers in data visualisation projects. It’s something that we think needs an improvement, and the two don’t have to be isolated…