I came across Sarah Groff Palermo’s “Shape of my Library”, where Palermo compiled a list of all of the books in her library that she’s read. She then represented each book as a small dot with a color based on the book genre. Mousing over an individual dot shows a popup text box describing how Palermo emotionally responded to that specific book, which remains unnamed. Clicking on the “Sort books” button separates the mass of dots into smaller groups, with the mass being divided based on the book genre. Each smaller group of books forms an ellipse with all having the same color, and each group has its individual dots slowly move around to naturally settle together.

I’ve always liked data representation of dots, and I like how Palermo personalized the data art to be hers, showing the group identity of genres, but also including how each book evoked a specific emotional response. It’s easy to neglect the individual, moving parts of a group, but Palermo intentionally includes it in the text descriptions and animation of each dot.