Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 21/09/2026We set aside some time last week to tinker around with our office tools! Please enjoy Ellory's signature Angry Owl doodle taking on a new form with our embroidery machine (and keep an eye out for more on our other recent experiments!) 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 16/09/2026We’re incredibly excited to share that Delphy, our tool for generating and exploring phylogenetic trees, has been published in Nature! Check out the paper here! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 110
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 14/09/2026And a big thank you to Dila for all her work on some exciting Rowboat mapping updates you'll be seeing very soon! 010
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 14/09/2026Last Friday, our intern Dila said goodbye with an incredible presentation all about her journey navigating Javascript and CSS with us this summer. We sent her off with a custom All Streets map of Cyprus and wish her all the best in her next adventure! 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 10/09/2026We wrote about our latest work on a mundane but important feature we’re excited about in Rowboat. Our intern Rahul’s picture of a smiley face in the data table isn’t exactly the intended use case, but we’re delighted that we've made that Easter egg possible. www.fathom.info/notebook/260... 020
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 02/09/2026...and the impact of ChatGPT on the college admissions process. 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 02/09/2026Check out some of her past projects exploring AI political deepfakes... 100
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 02/09/2026This summer, we welcomed Rekha as the latest member of our team! Rekha is a developer and designer with a background in theoretical linguistics and interactive journalism. 141
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 28/08/2026Revisiting some old favorite datasets in Rowboat lately (*cough* Squirrels! *cough*), I've been appreciating some of our recent updates that make it much easier to work with and apply changes to multiple columns at the same time. 130
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 25/08/2026Last week we said a fond farewell to Rahul on the last day of his internship. We've loved hearing all about his dragon boat team (they paddle, never row), his band (book 'em early), and his passion for image making (check out the cyanotype workshop he put together for us!) We'll miss you Rahul! 021
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 19/08/2026Did you catch the solar eclipse last week, wherever you were in the world? Here in Boston, we saw a delightful partial eclipse, featuring Paul's Eclipto box, for the naked eye, and Rahul's stunning photos, captured through eclipse glasses. 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 17/06/2026One of our beloved tools (or toys) in the office is this knitting machine, which we once used to make personalized patterns for our 2019 holiday cards. Lately, we've been getting re-acquainted with the machine by making small two-color swatches out of digital image patterns. 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 10/06/2026Paul recently shared with us some updates on his delightfully tiny typeface, Lilliput! He promises more styles coming soon, for all your woodland creature–sized typesetting needs. 🐿️📕 021
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 03/06/2026Thanks to Nermine for helping with Ben's class at MIT this semester, and for taking time to come share your work with us at the office! We gained a whole new appreciation for wind and how it shapes everything around us. 🌬️ 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 29/05/2026Lately, we've been going down a rabbit hole of data about place names in the US. Here, we can take our New England town establishment data into Rowboat and do two cool things: see a detailed county map and play it over time to see the northward spread of towns in the area, all in just 15 seconds. 101
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 27/05/2026Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Miles Davis. A little over a decade ago, Mark's passion for jazz developed into one of our all-time favorite projects: Scaled in Miles. 185
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 04/05/2026Today, we want to wish a very happy 89th birthday to one of our all time favorite collaborators: Mr. Ron Carter. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Maestro and his incredible team over the years! roncarteruniverse.com 011
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 03/04/2026These are powered by the Raspberry Pi Pico with a Pico Display on top — just 2in long and 1in wide! 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 03/04/2026We've been dreaming about hardware hacking for a few years and finally have the pieces we need. Ben, Karlie, and Andy put together about twenty of these gadgets. We did a dry run making weather displays in the studio yesterday, then got students set up at Ben’s information design class today. 152
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 19/12/2025We 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! 140
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 19/12/2025This 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/ 110
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 20/11/2025We 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-... 161
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 10/11/2025We 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... 041
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 20/10/2025Following the completion of his summer 2024 internship, we now welcome Andy back as a full time member of the team. 010
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 17/10/2025Voitko 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 130
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 02/10/2025Rowboat 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. 030
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 23/09/2025We 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 010
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 17/09/2025We 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. 110
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 22/08/2025In 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... 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 12/08/2025A 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. 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 25/07/2025📸 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/! 030
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 08/07/2025When 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 260
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 27/06/2025We 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 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 26/06/2025We 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! 010
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 24/06/2025Last 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 051
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 25/04/2025All 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. 161
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 16/04/2025Even our more experimental views go through several rounds of iteration - check out a few early versions of the concept as well! 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 16/04/2025Mark and Paul recently spent some time tinkering with new ways to show an outbreak moving over space, time, and population. 110
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 14/04/2025Happy Monday! We wanted to share some of the books we've been reading and enjoying lately. 110
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 31/01/2025And this fascinating diagram to accompany the original, by Ken Shirriff at righto.com, which contains a wealth of information about this piece and about many other tidbits of computer history. 000
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 31/01/2025Lately, 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. 140
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 23/12/2024Fathom'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/ 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 18/12/2024To make a stacked bar chart - just link two text columns together and enjoy. You can explore this dataset for yourself at rowboat.xyz/f/5f444u4e 010
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 18/12/2024To 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. 🥗 🐾 💉 120
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 16/12/2024Mark 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 050
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 12/12/2024We've been lucky to host a few special guests in the Fathom office over the last few weeks! 131
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 11/12/2024We've looked at datasets for mushroom classification, UFO sightings around the world, book reviews, and 1920s women's voter registration (to name a few). Now, we'd love to hear what you're exploring in Rowboat! 231
Fathom Information Design @fathom.info · 06/12/2024Rowboat lets you quickly try out new ways of looking at your data. Rotate through different chart types (including donuts, treemaps, bars, histograms, choropleth maps, timelines, and time series charts) right in the header as you explore your files. 010
