A look at 2022

Excerpt from a visual representation of the year 2022 at Voilà featuring semi-transparent abstract shapes on a white background. Months January through December run from the top to bottom, with a row of overlapping shapes under the name of each month. The form of the shape represents the type of product the team worked on (infographic, presentation, etc.), and the colour of each shape represents the theme of the work (environmental, social, governance). The approximate size of each shape represents the number of projects in each theme and product type. In the left and right-hand margins, abstract imprints indicate key moments of the year: recruitment in March and September, and an award won in November.

In addition to our 2022 retrospective, we have prepared this visual overview of the year as a greeting card to wish you a happy 2023.

When the right visual is not a chart

A photograph of a laptop featuring the opening screen of the web interactive, an isometric bird's eye view of an illustrated landscape.

In dataviz, we often deal with numbered abstractions. But when the Canadian Climate Institute came to us with research about infrastructure, a topic connected to physical objects, we saw the potential for illustrations. So this is the story of how data on the costs of climate change turned into an ambitious scrollytelling with animated landscapes. […]

2022 Retrospective

A stylized grey and yellow image with the following text: Voilà: 2022 Retrospective

These retrospectives are like books written one page at a time, once per year. I do it first to follow Voilà:’s progress, then publish it for all those interested in the evolution of an information design studio. Human Ressources We always start with the most important: the team. It has grown again this year with […]

Voilà: wins Gold!

Picture of the trophy: Information is Beautiful Awards, Winner Gold, Business Analytics 2022.

Out of 1250 entries, Voilà: won one of the 10 gold awards at the Information is Beautiful Awards 2022, in the Business Analytics category, for the project “The Star of our Work” designed by Celia Albano and Francis Gagnon. The ceremony was held in Washington D.C. on November 30th. Silver went to the Growth Lab, […]

We are finalists!

Visualization in the shape of a dense firework showing all 1250 projects submitted to the Information is Beautiful Awards 2022. 1000 were long listed (shown in light grey) of which 6 from Voilà (in yellow), and 90 were shortlisted (in white) of which 3 from Voilà (in glowing yellow)

For the first time in nine years of existence, we have submitted our projects to an awards competition. We sent six of them, covering the last three years, to the Information is Beautiful Awards, revived this year by the Data Visualization Society. ALL SIX made it onto the longlist. We were surprised and pleased, but […]

This dataviz has wings

Three drawings of butterflies with shades of lilac, pink and red on their wings and bodies. Some lean to the left, some to the right.

I love it when great data visualization comes from unlikely places and so I have an amazing update on a project by Sandrine Huot, a PhD student at Université Laval in Québec City, and former dataviz workshop participant. And it challenges once again some of the current wisdom about data visualization.  Sandrine has now fully developed […]

Another grim milestone, another data visualization

Cover page of the New York Times on Sunday May 15, 2022. It features a map of the 50 states with black dots placed where the victims of COVID died. The headline is “One million: A nation’s immeasurable grief”

We are given another opportunity to reflect on the limits of data visualization to convey a tragedy by today’s front page of the New York Times, with a map of a million reported deaths. Source: New York Times First, this map doesn’t say pandemic one bit. It’s mostly a population map and could represent cable […]

International Women’s Day 2022

Title: In almost all sectors, men earn more than women. Scatter plot: 17 sectors represented of which only 3 have a higher hourly wage for women: health care social assistance, forestry fishing

For International Women’s Day, we have updated our charts based on data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec and Statistics Canada. We start with the good news for women: their increased access to education has meant that for a little less than a decade, they have been completing a higher education degree in […]

A look at 2021

A visual overview of projects in 2021 at Voilà. On a black background, it is shaped like a snowflake or a spider web, with the twelve months going around like a clock. In the middle, there are yellow diamonds that representt the number of staff, going from 4 to 7. Around, there are various shapes that show the sectors of the projects (environment, social, governance). They have little arrows that represent the type of work: infographics, dashboard, interactive, etc.

In addition to our 2021 retrospective, we have prepared this visual overview of the year as a greeting card to wish you a happy 2022.

Retrospective 2021

Voilà: retrospective 2021 on a grey and yellow background.

As bad as 2021 was at the global level, it has been good to Voilà:. As I reflect back, it is hard to believe how much we have progressed in just a year. There are many things that I take for granted now but did not exist a year ago. Every year, I believe that […]