Water Atlas: Freshwater Data in Ten Pages
Sulman Cheema
Studio R&D, information design. Our own brief, built only from published data to show how the studio turns a dataset into one clear argument.
Brief
World water stress went from 17.47% in 2000 to 17.77% in 2022, which looks like nothing. Ten pages on who has freshwater, who withdraws it and who still cannot drink safely had to show what that average hides, without estimating or inventing a single figure.
Architecture and design system
Every series comes from FAO, the World Bank or the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme. Nothing is interpolated.
All ten pages are built around a single claim: the global average has not moved, and everything underneath it has.
Chart and map geometry is drawn from the data inside one self-contained file. The two figures computed for the atlas say so where they appear.
Motion and visual delivery
It is an edition, not a scroll. Each page is a composed sheet fitted to the screen, and pages turn with the keyboard or the controls.
Impact
Ten pages, each fitted to the viewport so nothing spills.
Every figure traced to FAO, the World Bank or the WHO/UNICEF JMP.
Measured on the published build (Chromium 141, Lighthouse 12.8 desktop preset, October 2026):
Lighthouse 100 for accessibility, best practices and SEO, and 97 for performance.
0 third-party requests. Data, maps and type ship in one 720 KB file, 360 KB gzipped.
0 JavaScript errors with reduced motion on.
The ten-page PDF edition embeds every font it uses.
Live build: https://studio-helpers.com/work/water-atlas/
Brief the studio: studio-helpers.com · WhatsApp +92 346 6616118 · Sulmancheema82@gmail.com
Like this project
Posted Oct 2, 2026
Studio R&D in information design. Ten pages on the world's freshwater built only from FAO, World Bank and WHO/UNICEF data, with charts and maps drawn from the data and the two computed figures labelled.
