I'd driven past the old railroad district a hundred times before I realized what Lemonly actually did — and once I understood, I couldn't unsee their work everywhere. They're an infographic design studio on North Nesmith, tucked into one of those brick buildings near the railyard that somehow feels both industrial and impossibly clean.
The thing about infographics is that bad ones make you feel stupid and good ones make complex things suddenly obvious. Lemonly does the second kind. They've worked with Google, Spotify, the NBA — clients who could hire anyone, anywhere — but they're here, a block south of 8th Street, turning data into stories that people actually want to look at.
I met their team at a Downtown Sioux Falls event last year, and what struck me wasn't the portfolio — though yes, their work is sharp — it was how they talked about visual storytelling like it mattered beyond the pixels. They weren't selling design services; they were solving communication problems. There's a difference, and you feel it.
The studio's built a reputation that reaches well beyond South Dakota. Publications, tech companies, healthcare systems — they all come to this corner of Sioux Falls because Lemonly understands that nobody reads anymore, but everyone still needs to understand. So they build charts and illustrations and data visualizations that do the work words can't.
Here's the honest part: their work isn't cheap, and it shouldn't be. You're not hiring them to make a pretty poster — you're hiring them to take something complicated and make it make sense. That takes time, strategy, actual creative thinking. But if you're a business trying to explain something dense or data-heavy, and you need people to get it without glazing over, this is where you go.
The 4.8 rating comes from six reviews, which feels about right for a B2B studio that doesn't need everyone — just the right ones.
— Grace