By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.

I think everyone is struggling somewhat with presentation. The Internet is generally well designed, if you look at the most popular websites, so we expect our visuals to be at that level of quality. When you sit in a presentation and you're looking at nonsensical pie charts and the like, your audience does disengage. People across a range of industries, not just science, are struggling with their communication because their output doesn't compete with what people see on a day-to-day basis.

By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.

I started moving into online work, and that exposed me to design and the impact it has on the flow, shape, and narrative of the story. This got me thinking that maybe this is a way of doing journalism, a way of telling stories and revealing patterns.

I have a computational quality to my mind, I suppose. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with video games. I reprogrammed games, and this eventually landed me a column in a magazine. That's how I got into print journalism: writing about video games.

It's enjoyable to just drink in an image. It's effortless. That struck me as an interesting way of looking at it: I do all the grunt work so you can enjoy.

I'm happy to provide that service. But that's the power of it. A good infographic that's been really worked on looks simple and easy, but it actually required a lot of processing.