Max Graze
data designer
I and I’m always exploring intuitive, multisensory ways to represent data and tell stories. Learn about what drives me, explore my freelance work, and find out how we can collaborate.
A collection of actionable tips with concrete illustrations of what makes these guides effective.
2025
2025
Dataviz Style GuidesSpeaking
A website dedicated to all things dataviz styleguides, co-hosted with Amy Cesal, Alan Wilson and Jon Schwabish.
2025
2025
Dataviz Style GuidesDesign
A hand-carved ceramic vessel mirrors this sonification timeline, tracing kimchi microbial family shifts every 5-10 days as concentric rings.
2025
2025
sonificationfermentationpottery
A sonification of temperature over 48 hours during koji fermentation, highlighting key steps like mixing and cooling that guide mold growth and flavor development.
2025
2025
D3.jsFermentationReactSonificationVCV Rack
A Substack newsletter that blends storytelling, science, and design to celebrate koji—a mold central to fermentation in traditional Japanese cuisine.
2025
2025
Data CollectionDesignFermentationFigma
This koji sonification turns koji's growth, heat, and enzyme activity into music and motion.
2025
2025
SonificationIllustration
A practical guide to building a data visualization style guide: start small, focus on what matters, and make your visuals clearer, faster, and more consistent.
2024
2024
Dataviz Style Guides
Practical tips and exercises on creating a data visualization style guide to ensure consistent, accessible, and visually engaging visualizations by focusing on core elements like colors, typography, and chart layouts.
2024
2024
Dataviz Style Guides
Data pottery. These miso jars transform recipe data into pottery itself vessel's form and attributes encode the ratio of its contents and the time to ferment.
2024
2024
CeramicsDesign
A playful look at the world's fermentations and and ode to the microorganisms that make them so delicious. Won a 2024 Sonification Award.
2024
2024
D3.jsDesignFermentationReactSonificationTone.js
An article to help researchers across multiple disciplines create better and more consistent charts, graphs, and diagrams.
2023
2023
Dataviz Style Guides
Bit-sized projects in sonification to get those creative juices running.
2023
2023
D3.jsDesignFermentationSonicPi
A workshop that I co-lead with Dea Bankvoa from Reuters Graphics for Observable Insights 2022
2022
2022
AnimationGSAPWorkshop
In this Outlier conference talk, Jordan Wirfs-Brock and I invite data designers to go beyond the visual—exploring how sensory experiences like taste, sound, and touch can open up new, inclusive ways of engaging with data.
2022
2022
Data Representations Speaking
A scrollytelling revealing how little we know about the world's writing systems. Created for The Endangered Alphabet Project.
2022
2022
D3.jsDesignStorytellingSvelte
This workshop explores how translating data across sensory modalities—sound, taste, touch—can expand the affordances of sketching and support more creative, embodied forms of data representation.
2022
2022
Data RepresentationsExercisesWorkshop
The colorful landscape of Japan's favorite edible organisms and some of the fermented food they are found in.
2021
2021
D3.jsDesignFermentationData Collection
A showcase and speculation of how data visualization can be used to enhance the digital experience, and even as a brainstorming tool for curators.
2020
2020
Museums
A review of tactics used to visualize digital museum collections.
2020
2020
Museums
about
Max Graze
fermentation & pottery
freelance
Workshops
- Dataviz toolbox
From hacking D3.js in a 3-part workshop for MICA’s data visualization graduate program to exploring low-code tools for dataviz (a crowd-pleaser at the Information is Beautiful Awards 2022), these workshops empower participants to build stunning visualizations with confidence. - Sensory SketchingCo-designed with Jordan Wirfs-Brock , this workshop is all about getting creative and thinking outside the chart. From a half-day deep dive at CHI 2022 to a 45-minute whirlwind at DSxD Sensory Sketching helps participants flex their creative dataviz muscles in a fun, hands-on way.
- Dataviz Landscape
This workshop invites participants to collect, feel, and sketch with data to better understand how it reflects—and distorts—real life. Through embodied exercises and ethical storytelling, we explore what it means to work with data critically and creatively.
Data Visualization Systems
At Figures & Figures, I’ve worked on systems for Spherical, Novartis, Lilly, and JetBrains. I also co-maintain the Data Visualization Style Guide website with Amy Cesal, Jon Schwabish, and Alan Wilson, and I’ve created guides for Mural, Center on Rural Innovation, Aseda Sciences, and myself.
If your team needs a shared approach to data visualization, I’d love to help build it.
Contact me ⤵ maxene.graze@gmail.com