ADC Awards
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Category
Data Visualization
Annual ID
ADC102_INT007G
About the Work
INSIGHT
When marginalized communities navigate the world, they're asked to do so using tools that prioritize someone else’s worldview. Change the tools, and you could change the experience.
THE BLACK ELEVATION MAP
An uplifting domestic travel utility for Black & Abroad that visualizes Black cultural data as elevation. The greater the density of data, the higher the elevation.
DATA VISUALIZATION
At the center, a visualization of +330,000,000 points of data, which through exploration reveals insights about population distribution, and where Black-owned businesses and cultural institutions are likely to be present, absent, and in what abundance.
SCALE
+330,000,000 total points of data
+47,000,000 Black population data
+28,000 Black-owned businesses listed
+6,500 cultural markers
+1,500 social sources across 53 embedded data feeds
VISUALIZING THE HEIGHTS
The project is a crafted patchwork of interwoven data and technologies:
NATURAL ELEVATION
A straight port of a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) called NASADEM.
TOTAL & BLACK POPULATIONS
Derived from a custom choropleth monochromatic visualization that uses census tract polygonal data for geographical units. Densities computed and visualized using quantile (equal count) categorization.
BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES
Elevation generated using an ad hoc point density visualization.
HMDB
Data tagged “African-American” pulled from the Historical Marker Database. Visualization generated as above.
POINTS OF INTEREST
CMS content and records from HMdb, combined with API data from Yelp! and Google, filtered for relevance to travel. Google Places ID used for standardization across sources. Rules for clustering and visibility by zoom level.
3D OVERLAY
Mapbox GL web library with a custom WebGL renderer, wrapped in a custom React web app.
SEARCH
Results from Mapbox service integrated to prioritize and differentiate project-specific records.
PRIORITIZING SELF-IDENTIFICATION
The data gathering process considered scale, quality, accessibility across all 50 states, ethical sourcing and race-based bias. We prioritized data from sources where users self-report their own ethnicity.
2023 Awards
Total Points: 45
Gold Cube
Credits
Agency
Performance Art / Toronto
Design Firm
Vocal Type Co. / Washington D.C.
Digital Agency
Reprise Canada / Toronto
PR / Marketing Agency
Glossy Inc. / Toronto
Client
Eric Martin
Kent Johnson
Client / Brand
Black & Abroad / Atlanta
Production Company
Alfredo Films / Toronto
Music / Sound Production Company
TA2 Sound + Music / Toronto
Post Production Company
Alter Ego / Toronto
Chief Creative Officer
Ian Mackenzie
Designer
Emily Plewes
Director
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall
Director of Photography
Shivam Pandya
Editor
Michael Ofori-Attah
Executive Creative Director
Colin Craig
Account Supervisor
Ricky Gunawan
Associate Creative Director
Benson Ngo
Pedro Izzo
Chief Executive Officer
Andrea Cook
Program Manager
Kaylen Dillon
account director
Jon Rae
Agency Partner
Meta / New York
Analytics Analyst
Abdul Dau
Analytics Manager
Anil Iqbal
Audience
Kinesso / New York
Chief Operations Officer
Elizabeth Sellors
Consultant
Gigi Basanta
Digital Producer
Darwin Garcia
Experience Delivery Lead
Nzegwhua Anderson
Experience Designer
Leon Mullings
Full Stack Developer
Cody Schreiber
Group Director, Product Development
Arnaud Icard
Interface Developer
Heung Lee
Junior Analyst
Shaista Meghji
Lead Developer
John Iacoviello
Media agency
Initiative Canada / Toronto
Quality Assurance Analyst
Nataliya Vislyanska
Quality Assurance Lead
Natalia Zadorozhna
Senior Experience Designer
Joe Szabo
Senior Technical Architect
Valerian Nasqidashvili
Solutions Consultant
Kaivalya Kashyap
SVP, Head of Strategy
Priyanka Goswami
SVP, Managing Director
Jordan Dinning
Technical Solutions Consultant
Suraj Patel
VP, Strategy
Kirk Linkletter
VP, Technology
Stuart Cheesmond
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