What if data could serve a visual purpose in branding? That’s what Ive been researching and experimenting with. Sports in general, but also motorsports, is a data driven sport. You can find countless of graphs, informations, sensor data,… everywhere. So why not use it as the core of a visual identity?
One of the coolest perks of this project is that I have access to the team’s engineering data. So I thought, how can I translate this very much technical data into visuals? When I look at a graph (for example the way the throttle position spikes or the G-force oscillates) I see a rhythm. So this post is about one of my design experiments that might make it to my masters thesis: Data as Pattern. There’s a, let’s call it movement, called Data Humanism, one of its most known designers is Giorgia Lupi. She talks about how data can be warm and imperfect. Or in general giving data more human attributes. I’m applying this to the Sport context. If you take raw squiggly lines of a racecar for example, you can turn them into typographic grids. Or you can take heat maps of brake discs and use those gradients as a color palette.
And the cool thing is that it isn’t random. It’s not just a cool shape. It’s the DNA of something (here, the car) translated into a visual language. It’s a way to tell a story through aesthetics. So that’s what I will try to apply in my thesis context or my Werkstück.
Disclaimer: This text was refined with the support of AI. The reflections and observations are based on my personal experience of attending the event.
