Curated and hosted by The British Library, the exhibition Census & Society: Why Everyone Counts marked the 21st census in Britain. The insightful show explored how the census influences our view of society and how it has adapted to society’s changing values.

Our approach was inspired by the unprecedented scale and detail of statistical and historical data – the challenge was to make it accessible and engaging.

The exhibition was conceived as a landscape of stacked cubes, visually echoing bar charts and information graphics. The cubes featured images, maps, public information broadcasts and cartoons alongside insights from census data. The user journey was carefully designed to allow for three separate entrances. Each one featured a backlit panel displaying census-related statistics with pictograms, inviting visitors to enter and explore. A large-scale typographic totem and a distinct colourway identified each of the six exhibition sections.