# Billboard Charts

**Year:** 2012
**Role:** Lead designer (information design)
**At:** Pentagram — Michael Bierut's team
**Client:** Billboard
**Tags:** music, stories-and-dataviz, design-systems
**Case study:** /work/billboard-charts
**Studio page:** https://www.pentagram.com/work/billboard

In 2012, Pentagram was redesigning Billboard, a music authority since 1894.
The Billboard Charts presented their own design challenges, and the team —
Michael Bierut leading — brought me in to own the chart-system redesign.
I'd left Pentagram by then; Billboard hired me direct, with Pentagram
subcontracting.

![A pile of Billboard magazine covers from across the chart's history](/work/billboard-charts/billboard-cover-pile.jpg)

## A century-old institution

The case study opens with chart spreads from each decade — 1940s through
2010s — placing the redesign within an eighty-year design lineage.

![Billboard chart in the 1940s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1940s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 1950s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1950s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 1960s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1960s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 1970s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1970s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 1980s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1980s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 1990s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-1990s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 2000s](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-2000s.png)
![Billboard chart in the 2010s — Here we are!](/work/billboard-charts/evolution/billboard-2010s.png)

![Hot 100 print spread showing inline imagery inside select rows, a left-to-right ramp of previous positions, and Digital Gainer / Sales Gainer red flags](/work/billboard-charts/billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--billboard200.jpg)

## Upgrades

I introduced new features into the chart system:

- Typography tuned for scannability.
- Heatmap layer showing each song's week-over-week shift in position.
- Photo and blurb slots inside table rows — injecting narrative and matching
  the magazine's aesthetic.
- Badge system that flags patterns of movement up and down the rankings.

I framed the proposal as three tiers (conservative / middle / radical) for
Michael to take to the client. Billboard picked the radical tier. That went
to print.

![Detail of a Hot 100 row featuring a "God's Dead" editorial blurb and accompanying photography](/work/billboard-charts/billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01---detail.jpg)

![Hot 100 chart spread](/work/billboard-charts/cycler/01-billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--100.jpg)
![Country and rock genre chart spread](/work/billboard-charts/cycler/02-billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--country-rock.jpg)
![Continued chart spread](/work/billboard-charts/cycler/03-billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--continued.jpg)
![Latin chart spread](/work/billboard-charts/cycler/04-billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--latin.jpg)
![World chart spread](/work/billboard-charts/cycler/05-billboard-portfolio_edits-26-06-01--world.jpg)

![Billboard chart system on mobile web](/work/billboard-charts/billboard-web.png)

The chart system was extended across Billboard's digital properties by
[Area17](https://area17.com/).

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