Tracking which third-place teams advance
While our studio’s timeline is typically shaped by the slow, deliberate craft of physical-digital art installations, data visualisation and information design have always run through our work, and 008 is that discipline turned on a live event.
008 was born as a week-long guerrilla project. The catalyst was a systemic and visual challenge we observed during the expanded 48-team World Cup. With the tournament’s complex 12-group structure, tracking which third-place teams advance to the next round became a mathematical puzzle. Conventional sports sites show only the group tables or a snapshot ranking of the best third-placed teams, which fails to capture the dynamic flow of qualification, where almost every team could still finish third until its last group match, and offers no direct way to compare where they will stand.
Early in our careers, during 15 years working in digital agencies, we built similar data features and live trackers for mainstream Benelux newspapers. Back then, bringing such ideas to life meant navigating heavy organisational processes and legacy systems. Today, operating as an independent studio, we can bypass those structures, allowing us to build and ship a fresh perspective within days.
Armed with an API and our own approach to information design, we built an interactive tracker that reframes the tournament’s architecture. Stripping away the noise of modern ad-heavy websites or paywalls, we committed to a completely clean, privacy-first architecture: no ads, no tracking cookies, and no email collection.
Rather than just listing points, this lightweight tool visualises each team’s proximity to the qualification cutline. It highlights the systemic reality of the tournament format, revealing why some teams advance with fewer points than others who are sent home.
Despite living on a brand-new subdomain ranking.sfae.studio, with sfae.studio holding no topical authority in sports, the tracker resonated on a massive scale. At its peak, the platform received over 500,000 visits in 24 hours and more than 70 million impressions on Google. It broke into the top results of broad, high-competition searches like “world cup standings,” queries with millions of impressions, ranking next to legacy players like the New York Times, Wikipedia, FIFA, and ESPN.
For our studio, this project serves as more than a quick experiment. It is a validation of how we intend to approach all of our future work across both digital and physical platforms: combining our expertise with the agility to look at complex, crowded spaces and offer a clean, direct, and entirely different perspective.
Or jump straight to your country’s road-to-the-trophy page, tracing the hills they had to climb to reach the final… or where their run ended:
A few more projects where we try to make complex things simple
One thread runs through the studio. We take something complex, whether a live dataset, a hidden system or a human pattern, and make it clear. Sometimes that’s data visualisation on a screen; sometimes it’s data made physical in light or sculpture. We use data as a recurring material.
Echo Chamber, for instance, analyses visitors’ voices in real time and replays them as a living light sculpture. In Perfect Place maps eight states of belonging (a.o. searching, arriving, thriving, drifting) into a precise language of colour, height and form. Information design as sculpture: a complex inner system made legible in your hand, on your desk or on your wall.
001 | Echo Chamber
Multidimensional LED Matrix, AI Models, TouchDesigner
2025 Unique Works Loan
Experience the social media funnels and groupthink.
Your voice is matched by words and tone with previous visitors. The Machine places you among like-minded spirits, letting their sounds continue the conversation and creating a shared, evolving sonic space.
Did you visit the Echo Chamber during Wonder Festival or G.AN.D.A. Art Route?
003 | In Perfect Place
Visual Language Design, 3D printing, Blender, Digital Tool Creation, Product Development
2025 Unique Works Limited Editions Multiples Loan
When have you truly felt you belonged? Did it spark energy, creativity, deep focus, or help you make an agonising choice?
These panels reveal our visual language, and let you rediscover key life moments and reconnect with the positive emotions you felt.