Posts Tagged: skills

education — 1 Comment
14
Oct 11

Learning to spot patterns

8-bit playing card design by Artemy Lebedev, seen on subtraction.com

Seeing this lovely set of playing cards gives me the excuse to air a thought I had a while ago.

As a child I played cards lots. And the skills I didn’t realise I was learning are dead useful for seeing different ways into data, handy if you work in infographics these days: groups, sub-groups, hierarchy, sets, patterns, mental arithmetic, different ways of cutting and rearranging the same set of numbers. Same idea as here.

Add it to the curriculum immediately.

education — Comments Off
25
Aug 10

Skill set 2010

Desirable skills in a web newsroom (The New York Times to be precise). Any good if I could do a bit of all of them?

Front-end Interactive Designer Full skill-set of client-side technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript/Prototype. Experience with Ruby on Rails is a plus

Motion Design Storyteller Working knowledge of AfterEffects and Photoshop in producing motiongraphics. Final Cut a plus. We are looking for someone to help grow the motion design side of storytelling. So applicant must have a strong sense of timing and narrative and have the ability to implement a variety of creative styles

Interactive Flash Journalist Advanced programming knowledge and experience in Flash and ActionScript 3. Experience with Photoshop and Illustrator is a plus

From Teaching Online Journalism

education — Comments Off
1
Jun 10

Intensive re-skill

A friend’s friend just did it.

His wife got a job abroad for a year in a developing country where his skills wouldn’t be useful locally – high end animation, graphics, effects. But he’d been meaning to learn a couple of new software packages himself. And so he recognised it as an opportunity. The cost of living would be less, and with a computer and a broadband connection he’d be able to totally absorb himself in learning.

Reminded me of the total immersion thought I had for learning some programming…

education — Comments Off
19
Mar 10

Processing

Being aware that a digital revolution is trying to pass me by – and that Processing seems to be the digital tool of choice of lots of data designy types that I admire – in the new year I scoured the internet again for any courses in London, or the UK for that matter. Amazingly there was one starting in late January at the V&A: Programming for artists and designers: An Introduction to Processing, Tuesdays, 26 January – 16 March, 18.30–21.00. Sounded like what I was after.

Oh boy. I had a small headstart having worked through Ben Fry’s book up until it got heavy. As for these classes, first one OK. Second one I kind of kept up. Thereafter I was more observing than anything else. The drop-out rate was exponential, in fact everyone dropped out except the teachers, me and those pupils who already knew another programming language. They were trying to cover too much for too many people from too many disciplines who wanted to do different things with Processing.

What’s frustrating is I know that given the time I don’t doubt I’ve got the aptitude to pick up a programming language or two, but what this course made me realise is that the only way I’m going to do it is by total immersion. And a suitable chunk of uninterrupted time isn’t something I’ve got just now.

I count myself lucky we have such talented developers to work with in the office, trained specialists, knowledgeable and brilliant because they’ve spent years studying the subject, just like I have design. I don’t ever presume to be as good as them, but at least I’m on the way to beginning to understand the mindset, language and approach.

education / opinion — 1 Comment
17
Jan 10

Old media v new media

I used to work in print. Now I work online. And there is a difference. Print is better for some things, online for others, but they are not the same. People consume them differently. Acknowledge there’s a difference and play to the strengths of the medium you’re working in for the best results.

I would say this is very typical problem publishers are facing. Traditionally, for print, information visualised within a story could be done by a designer, slotted into the page, job done. Multi-media visualisations still need editorial to provide a good story, and a designer to help visualise it, but there are the additional skills needed of interaction and production. Multi-media is often compared to film-making for that reason: you need a raft of people – director, producer, camera man, editor, sound, lighting, etc to pull off a good result in film.

The internet is a little more forgiving, it’s more accepted to have a go, put something out there, learn from it and do it a bit better next time. But get a well balanced editorial/design/developer team in place – ideally with people who overlap across those boundaries – you’ll get the slick, versatile, good, consistent multi-media products that currently there aren’t enough of.

Designers: keep learning new skills, you can’t afford to stand still. Publishers: while you might see a larger team as an expense today it’s definitely a worthwhile investment for the future.

example — Comments Off
23
Jun 09

The benefits of storytelling

The production values of the two videos below aren’t great but they both use the tool of storytelling to help explain the big numbers we keep hearing in the news. And the advantages are that they make the subject matter more understandable to a wider audience.

This is something I’d been keen to see more of and to have a go producing myself too = another set of skills = collaboration.