Colombian designer Jose Duarte wants to bring the DIY concept to data visualization. Using ordinary materials like balloons, tape and rubber balls, he has experimented with various visualization techniques from area charts to bubble graphs and ven diagrams in diverse scenarios as business, art, street interventions and even astronomy. To help people build physical visualizations he designed a physical toolkit he calls the Handmade visualization toolkit. Sources: Maria Popova (2011) Analog […]

Artist Tali Weinberg is working since 2015 on extensive series of textile data-art documenting heat waves, water color variations, average temperatures, etc. On her website you can discover the dozen different pieces from the “Climate Datascape” series, as well as other data projects. I translate climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into abstracted landscapes and waterscapes, materializing the data with plant-derived fibers and dyes and […]

Alice Thudt, a PhD student in Computational Media Design, crafts pieces of pottery that embody data about moments she shared with her loved ones. Left image (2015): cereal bowls showing Skype-call history between Alice and her parents. On the front bowl, each line represents a day where they skyped. On the other bowl, each dot represents 10 min of call time. She offered a bowl as a present to her parents and kept the other one as a reminder to stay in touch every time she has breakfast. Middle […]

This project is about the revival of the ancient Incan Quipu. This project is about a comparison of well-being in Latin America and top leading countries in Scandinavia as assessed by the OECD Better Life Index. It shows the inequalities between those two cultures as well as between men and women visualised with the help of the Incan recording devise - the quipu. Source: Ewa Tuteja, http://tuteja.info/inequalities-quipu/

Infographic designers at the National Geographic crafted a 3D physical visualization out of paper and colored cardboard in order to prepare a 2D infographic. Source: Alberto Lucas López (2017) Handmade #dataviz (tweet). Related: Also see our entry on IBM's cosmograph.

Harassment Plants is a situated physicalization exhibited in a Brazilian city to represent stories of harassment experienced by women in a public lakeside. Each vase represents a different category of harassment and contains glyphs that represent cases of harassment. The color in the middle of the vase corresponds to the type of harassment, which is also represented by the same color in one of the beads. Each glyph is composed of a rod — whose length represents the time of the day the […]

DayDohViz is as a "daily" inspiration project that experiments with physically visualizing data in 3D using a smartphone and Play-Doh. Yes, Play-Doh. Creator Amy Cesal's subjects range from self-disclosing and serious (her personal financial data, government enforcement actions) to delicious and exhilarating (pizza types, top roller coasters). Amy has found the tactile, ephemeral & imprecise nature of Play-Doh - so different from the typical data viz technology - to be creatively […]

Handmade physicalizations of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, by Mieka West and Sheelagh Carpendale. Each object represents data from a specific year (1990, 2010, and projections to 2030). Initially meant to be smog masks, the designs evolved into strange and beautiful objects evoking indigeneous artefacts such as Native American dreamcatchers, Inca quipus and Polynesian genealogical instruments, and whose visual and material complexity is reminiscent of Nathalie Miebach’s Woven Sculptures. […]

Dipsea Chimes is a kinetic data sculpture made by information designer Maggie Shi celebrating the Dipsea Race, America’s oldest trail race. Installed on a terrace overlooking Mt. Tamalpais - the race’s iconic setting - it is accessible to the local community. The piece aims to raise awareness of the race’s historical significance, particularly its pioneering role in equity and gender inclusion. To achieve this, the design presents race data in a tangible, interactive format, making it engaging […]

A handmade bead bracelet visualizing temperature changes in Arkhangelsk city over several decades. Inspired by the Warming Stripes method, each 2 rows encodes a year: red beads for warmer-than-average years, blue for cooler ones. The project involved translating historical climate data into bead colors and weaving them into a tangible artifact—a physical timeline of local global warming. Sources: Project’s Website Information is Beautiful Awards website Related: Also see our entry 2013 – […]