While reflecting on 2020, Catherine Madden graphed 6 different charts that she felt represented her year; and brought them to life within an infographic tapestry! Her categories were 3 personal (relationships, projects, and adventures) and three external (Covid cases, air quality, and average tide heights in San Francisco). See Catherine’s full creative process on her blog, Catherinemadden.com.

From Catherine:

‘Every December, my friend Eugene hosts a gathering among friends, colleagues, and co-learning group members where he guides everyone through a process of reflection. In this process we map out the highs and lows of the past year. I have been able to participate two out of the past three years, and feel so grateful for the simple fact that I have people in my life who similarly value making time for reflection, connection, and art making.

Two years ago, I had a blast creating this simple journey map that started with sticky notes and ended with some sort of layered line chart. Looking back two years later, it’s such a great summary of the highs and lows that felt so intense in the moment but now are distant memories.

In part two of the activity, each person was encouraged to create some art inspired by the journey. Everyone took a very different direction, and the data storyteller in me wanted to keep some of the structure of the journey map. My first step was to identify a set of categories that felt interesting to me— personal and professional blend together in so many ways that I wanted to look at the year by different dimensions.

I went back to the first set of lines and split them apart into small multiples. This felt like I was onto something. You can see my note for measurements on this page because at this point I realized I needed to do some space planning based on the size of my loom.

Found on Flowing Data