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.

Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.

There's a tendency in graphics to allow the trimming of certain parts. But I think that if you're open about your process, your methodology, such as introducing thresholds, introducing filters, techniques people use in research and data management, it's legitimate. It's legitimate to say, "We're only going to show data above this level, or between levels."

For years I thought I was just a writer, but when I sat down to design and started playing around with it, I realized that, really, it's pretty easy. Obviously it's more than just a set of rules, but the basics of design are actually pretty simple and quite mathematical. The link between data and design works at quite a fundamental level.

I've been working on a graphic about carbon emissions. It's an incredibly simple graphic - a bunch of blocks and a table below it - but it's taken me three weeks to design. For some reason it just wasn't working. Then finally I realized there was a number present, which I was rendering in each version, that wasn't necessary for the understanding of the piece. This figure was getting in the way and distracting from the main flow of the narrative. As soon as I pulled that graphic out of the design, it sprang into focus. Suddenly it worked.

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.