Fathom Information Design
We build platforms and products for understanding data. fathom.info
- We visited the Leventhal Map & Education Center last year and, after diving into everything from maps of dragons to geographic data visualizations, Karlie shared some thoughts on how map-making has transformed over time. You can find the blog post at fathom.info/notebook/260122
- In the latest post on our blog, Katherine reflects on how we've been thinking and talking about generative AI in the studio. www.fathom.info/notebook/260...
- Thanks, Jasper, for this detailed write-up about using Rowboat to look at Dutch vehicle registration data! It's always a nice boost to hear that the tool is useful and helps with doing this kind of exploration more easily. blog.kenteken.tv/2025/10/15/s...
- We just pushed out our last big batch of Rowboat improvements and fixes before the end of the year. Fun fact: the most long-lived issue that we managed to close in this time was one that had been open for 2 years and 4 months. Feels good to finally get that one resolved!
- This year we celebrated the holidays by gathering together our favorite cozy winter treats and comfort meals to share with our friends and families. You can visit the charming animated cookbook Paul put together to read, print, and share our recipes: www.fathom.info/holiday/25/
- As is now tradition, Ellory put together a year end recap to keep our avid fans updated on all we’ve been up to (both in and out of the office) in 2025. It’s now up on our blog if you would like to check it out: www.fathom.info/notebook/251... Wishing you all a safe and restful holiday season!
- Last month, we shared that Sentinel, our collaboration with the Sabeti Lab and IGH, has been awarded the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change grant. We wrote a bit more about the news, reflecting on how this project came to be and how it continues to give us hope: www.fathom.info/notebook/251...
- We are beyond excited that our collaboration with the Sabeti Lab and IGH to develop an outbreak detection and response framework has been awarded the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change grant! You can check out the announcement here: www.macfound.org/press/press-...
- We just launched a desktop version of Rowboat! * Open much larger files (offline!) * Own Desktop as a one-time purchase. * Use a double-clickable app that’s even faster than the web version. Browser or desktop, your data never leaves your machine. Read more: www.fathom.info/notebook/251...
- Following the completion of his summer 2024 internship, we now welcome Andy back as a full time member of the team.
- Voitko sanoa uudelleen? Outside of the studio, Mark’s been studying Finnish and Paul’s learning type design. We’re delighted by these unique Finnish cheatsheets they designed using Paul’s work-in-progress font Lilliput. #typedesign #finnish #typography #languagelearning #liliput
- Rowboat makes it easy to explore data by filtering down to different subsets. In this UFO sightings dataset (rowboat.net/f/uzu782mq), ppen the Find tool and filter the “datetime_time” column with “7/4” to see how many sightings happened on July 4th.
- We recently made a round of visual updates to Rowboat to make it even easier to spot geographic regions where data is more highly concentrated. To get more out of your own geographic data, head to www.rowboat.net
- We updated Rowboat’s Chrome extension to open HTML tables and links to .csv, .tsv, and .xls spreadsheets in your browser with a simple right click. Just locate the dataset you want to examine, right click, and select “Open Table in Rowboat” to start exploring.
- In our latest blog post, Chase gives us a lesson in wet-bulb temperature calculations, conversing with coworkers while running, and the perks of opting out of the MBTA for your morning commute. You can read more here: www.fathom.info/notebook/250...
- A few weeks ago, we survived another "Fathom Song Guessing Game" — my favorite day of the year when we all get to know each other a bit better via our musical selections. This year's theme was UNLEASH THE BEAST. We have since managed to re-leash our beasts, and the office is back in order.
- 📸 Rowboat's header snapshot feature makes it easy to discover insights and instantly share your findings. When you spot something interesting, you’re just a click away from getting it in front of your team or shared online! Check out the datasets on rowboat.xyz/!
- When your dataset contains columns with lists or arrays instead of single values, the Set Analysis header in Rowboat breaks these entries apart so you can analyze each term individually. Explore this BoardGameGeek dataset: rowboat.xyz/f/mczim00b
- We recently dove into papal history, tracking the length of every papacy from 30 AD to 2013. If your data contains paired values — start and end, or minimum and maximum, just link them and explore the ranges! Explore the pope dataset with Rowboat 🚣 : rowboat.xyz/f/wvjko69a
- We are so excited to welcome Karlie as the latest addition to our team! Karlie is an interdisciplinary designer and developer with an affinity for textile-oriented projects. Check out some of Karlie's incredible work here!
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- Last September, we launched Rowboat — a tool for getting a quick, meaningful first look at your data. Today, we’re excited to share some new features to help you explore your data visually and answer even more questions. Dive in! 🌊 Explore the OKCupid dataset: rowboat.xyz/f/oxr6zumn
- We have a ton of updates we're excited to share about Rowboat, our tool for making sense of large datasets. Read about it on our blog: fathom.info/notebook/250... We'll also be continuing to share some of these features in more detail here, so keep an eye out for those!
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- We're immensely proud of the work we're able to do with @pardissabeti.bsky.social and the Sentinel team at @sabetilab.bsky.social in building systems to get ahead of viral outbreaks, like the mpox outbreak unfolding in Sierra Leone now. Read more in this latest article: time.com/7291478/sier...
- Thanks for checking it out, Marius!
- All three top runners in the women's division of the Boston Marathon crushed the previous time record this year! We took a look at the trends in finish times over the race's history, and were struck by the rapid leaps in record breaking over the first two decades women were allowed to compete.
- Mark and Paul recently spent some time tinkering with new ways to show an outbreak moving over space, time, and population.
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- Happy Monday! We wanted to share some of the books we've been reading and enjoying lately.
- Our recent discovery of a 2018 census of Central Park squirrels inspired Katherine to write up a lovely piece walking through how we can quickly unpack the antics of over 3,000 squirrel with Rowboat — a tool we built for diving into new datasets. fathom.info/notebook/250...
- Lately, we've been thinking a lot about this piece for inspiration: Marilou Schultz's "Replica of a Chip" is a woven rug that uses Navajo weaving techniques to recreate the patterns found on computer chips, specifically the Intel Pentium processor.
- Fathom's holiday card this year honors our love of New England, with a data-focused twist! Big thanks to Paul for leading the charge in getting our mailing out the door, and for putting together a delightful mini-site to pair with this year's card: fathom.info/holiday/24/
- Fathom has a newsletter! If you want to keep up to date on the latest from our studio, you can subscribe to our mailing list here: buttondown.com/fathominfo
- We couldn't ask for a more perfectly snowy day in Boston as we head off into our winter break! To hear more about what we've been up to this year, check out our 2024 recap up on our blog: fathom.info/notebook/241... Wishing you all a joyful holiday season and a happy new year ❄
- To close out the year, we introduced stacked bar charts to our roster of header charts! We've been having a blast exploring a dataset of ok cupid profiles from the early 2010's with this new feature. See some of our favorite findings below. 🥗 🐾 💉
- Mark recently put together a thoughtful piece on how we designed Delphy (a new tool for rapidly generating and exploring phylogenetic trees) to be able to lower technical barriers to phylogenetic research. You can find his full blog post here: fathom.info/notebook/241... delphy.fathom.info
