I was a freelance journalist, and it was a struggle because I had to pitch all the time, research, and stay on top of subjects.

The classic one for me is one of my favorite images - left-versus-right political-spectrum image. I was trying to visualize the concepts on the political spectrum. I'm left-leaning, and I discovered as I was doing it that I had an impulse to make the left-hand side appear better than the right-hand side. That was manifesting in the way I was choosing certain words, framing certain ideas. I shared it with a few people, and they all said, "Oh my God, this is really biased." I hadn't seen it at all.

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 was a freelance journalist, and it was a struggle because I had to pitch all the time, research, and stay on top of subjects.

Visualizing information is a form of knowledge compression.

Design has a powerful impact on the viewer. It has authority, and data also has the same air of authenticity and detail. It can be hard to argue with a graph, and it's hard to argue with data. So to combine data with a strong visual impact creates a powerful message.

Data is the new soil, because for me, it feels like a fertile, creative medium. Over the years, online, we've laid down a huge amount of information and data, and we irrigate it with networks and connectivity, and it's been worked and tilled by unpaid workers and governments.