2021 was a very exciting year at Voilà:, full of new projects and a team growing and growing. It was worth a visualization! Although we live and breathe information design, it is the first time we make a data visualization about ourselves. We wanted something attractive and playful rather than analytical.
The data
We wanted to reflect the diversity of products that we provide for our clients and the wide range of projects we've worked on. We also wanted to stress the importance of the themes and how we care about working to make a positive impact on society and the planet.
The other important data is the people behind all this. Voilà: started 2021 with a team of four and finished it with four new recruits! With a departure in between, it means that we are now seven dataviz and design lovers working together.
The design
The original idea was a snowflake, to capture the spirit of the holiday season. After some inconclusive tries, we left some data aside and it turned out to be more like a spider web or a blooming flower. And that's ok! Voilà: is knitting its web and our projects are like pollen spreading through the world to flourish.
The evolution of the employees' number had to be the heart of the visualization. The glow emphasize the recruitment periods, showing the importance of the process and the growth of the team.
As we used the Voilà: colour palette, we were limited to four colours (yellow, black, two shades of grey). Not a lot to visualize so many different themes and products. That's why we decided to play with shapes instead, and a variation of symbols for the products. Finally, to represent accurately the workload, we added the zigzag lines to show the duration of each project.
And Voilà:!
A glimpse at our first steps and tests showing the path to the final visualization :
In the first iterations, the final concept was already there.
The arrows and lines represent the number of visualizations produced during a month. Then they became a spiral to show their cumulative number, before abandonning the idea of representing them at all.
We also thought of connecting projects with the same client before using the zigzag lines for the duration of each project.
We decided to go on brand and use shapes instead of colours to differenciate the themes.
We tried different ways to present recruitment periods, like yellow diamond outlines on the spokes or a yellow gradient.
And back to the final version, here in French.
