About

This Blog

It has always seemed like such a struggle for me to balance technical and creative interests in a single job. Most companies seem to favor (and reward) specialists in one field or the other — leaving little room for a person with a weird combination of skills. However, because every business consists of both technical and creative components, there is always room for someone who can bridge the gap.  And these days, with almost every company trying to remain relevant in a fast-moving digital environment, there is a growing role for people who can understand the needs of the customer (both internal and external) and convey those needs to other members of the team.

This blog is designed to explore the intersection of information, design and programming, with the twin goals of developing my skills in each of these areas and finding out how to use those skills in my career. The starting point is perhaps best encapsulated by the evolving concept of the data scientist or information designer. These fields combine skills and talents from different areas:

  1. Computer Science – acquire and parse data
  2. Mathematics, Statistics, & Data Mining – filter and mine
  3. Graphic Design – represent and refine
  4. Infovis and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) – interaction

Visualizing these skills in a graph shows how different jobs (identified using standard SOC or ONET codes) place different emphasis on these abilities. The three jobs below each have strengths that need to be cultivated in order meet the needs of information design.


This Blog’s Theme

When I kick-started this blog, I wanted to pick a theme that had a simple, flexible design that I could modify over time. I went with the “green apple” theme from Rose City Sister and immediately got under the hood and made a few color changes to the style sheet. Over time I’ve been slowly modifying other aspects of the design to make it more suitable for my needs.

Just for fun, here’s my list:

  • Placed a solid color in the header. I wanted something a little bolder than the default design of the original theme.
  • Shrunk the height of the header. I wanted to reduce the amount of screen real estate devoted to the title. It is still probably more while space than is necessary above the fold but I like the way the color sets off the rest of the site.
  • Darkened the main text slightly.
  • Added my own logo. This light bulb design has been around for awhile and it’s simple enough to work with the theme.
  • Modified the GIF files that sprinkle the design of the site. I started with the highlight lines and gradually worked my way through the bullets and arrows.
  • Modified the CSS so that the width of the site was static instead of dynamic. I had added a few graphics on one of the pages and I didn’t like the way their size changed depending on the width of the screen.
  • Eliminated the left sidebar entirely to clean up the layout. It’s still there in the theme … it’s just blank.
Share