Form as an Extension of Content

In October 2020, a data archive for social sciences and digital humanities was launched at the Belgian national archives institution, the State Archives of Belgium. This new infrastructure, called the Social Sciences and Digital Humanities Archive (SODHA), is meant to accrue and make available datasets in any of the disciplines that constitute social sciences and digital humanities. To support this endeavor, the online platform relies on the open-source software for digital repository management Dataverse, developed by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) of Harvard University. IQSS have made it possible to customise installations of their software to a large extent, especially the formal, outer aspects. This makes for interesting design choices, not just for branding an installation but also to translate any organisation’s communication strategy with both broad and minute modifications. We contend that working on the design—that is, the formal aspects of an application—does not amount to “cosmetic” work; rather, it empowers the administrators of a platform to shape their front end so that it best conveys what its core functions and purposes—in other words, its content—are all about. We present the context in which SODHA was launched, how we elaborated a particular communication strategy calibrated for researchers, and the ensuing design choices. Examples of changes and adaptations are provided and contextualised.