Periscopic

Periscopic is a Portland, Oregon based data visualization firm founded by Kim Rees and Dino Citraro in 2004. They are one of the pioneers in the field of visualization. The company bills itself as a "socially conscious information visualization firm." They have worked with such clients as Google, GE, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rees is an advisor to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, making sure Congress’s reports are clear and unbiased. Citraro and Rees wrote a chapter in New Challenges for Data Design where they discuss how to create designs that let people feel a sense of ownership of the data they are displaying.

In 2010 Periscopic was a finalist in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards. The company was featured in the Best American Infographics of 2015 for an illustration of the worldwide gender gap in science PhDs, originally featured in Scientific American. The company won an APDU Data Viz Award in 2017 for their work on the US Patent and Trademark Office's website PatentsView, a project they worked on with the US Department of Agriculture, the American Institutes for Research’s Center for the Science of Science and Innovation Policy, the University of California at Berkeley, and Twin Arch Technologies.

Periscopic's best known work is their piece entitled US Gun Deaths. The visualization shows data about "stolen years" as the result of gun deaths in the United States. It has been covered extensively in the popular press, called "One of the most arresting gun-related graphics we’ve seen" by The Trace and a "beautifully illustrated interaction" by Wired magazine. Data visualization expert Alberto Cairo provided a review and critique of the piece, and National Geographic has covered the piece as an inspiring example of data visualization work. Academics have also praised the piece, as a particularly adept example of imbuing visualization with emotion, and allowing readers to come to their own epiphanies. The piece won a 2013 Information is Beautiful bronze Award and was on display at the Visualized conference in New York City.

The company itself won a 2015 Information is Beautiful bronze Award for Outstanding Outfit.

• Inaugural Emotions - a project that categorized video-based data to capture the mood of presidential speeches.
• The State of the Polar Bear - bringing together all known data sets concerning polar bear populations.
• Electrified: One Million Volts Always On - a display tracking real time social media responses to a David Blaine performance, with SocialFlow
• ChartCheck - curbing misinformation's spread via charts and graphs
• RX Handout - a redesign of the classic prescription bottle
• On the Trump Emoto-Coaster - a visualization of Donald Trump's speeches