Writing

Small Design Firm is looking for a programmer-designer

nobel00.jpgMy friends down the street at Small Design Firm (started by Media Lab alum and namesake David Small) are looking for a programmer-designer type:

Small Design Firm is an interactive design studio that specializes in museum exhibits, information design, dynamic typography and interactive art. We write custom graphics software and build unique physical installations and media environments. Currently our clients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Maya Lin.

We are looking to hire an individual with computer programming and design/art/architecture skills. Applicants should have a broad skill set that definitely includes C++ programming experience and an interest in the arts. This position is open to individuals with a wide variety of experiences and specialities. Our employees have backgrounds in computer graphics, typography, electrical engineering, architecture, music, and physics.

Responsibilities will be equally varied. You will be programming, designing, writing proposals, working directly with clients, managing content and production, and fabricating prototypes and installations.

Small Design Firm is an energetic and exciting place to work. We are a close-knit community, so we are looking for an outgoing team member who is willing to learn new skills and bring new ideas to the group.

Salary is commensurate with experience and skill set. Benefits include health insurance, SIMPLE IRA, and paid vacation.

Contact john (at) smalldesignfirm.com if you’re interested.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | opportunities  
Book

Visualizing Data Book CoverVisualizing Data is my 2007 book about computational information design. It covers the path from raw data to how we understand it, detailing how to begin with a set of numbers and produce images or software that lets you view and interact with information. When first published, it was the only book(s) for people who wanted to learn how to actually build a data visualization in code.

The text was published by O’Reilly in December 2007 and can be found at Amazon and elsewhere. Amazon also has an edition for the Kindle, for people who aren’t into the dead tree thing. (Proceeds from Amazon links found on this page are used to pay my web hosting bill.)

Examples for the book can be found here.

The book covers ideas found in my Ph.D. dissertation, which is the basis for Chapter 1. The next chapter is an extremely brief introduction to Processing, which is used for the examples. Next is (chapter 3) is a simple mapping project to place data points on a map of the United States. Of course, the idea is not that lots of people want to visualize data for each of 50 states. Instead, it’s a jumping off point for learning how to lay out data spatially.

The chapters that follow cover six more projects, such as salary vs. performance (Chapter 5), zipdecode (Chapter 6), followed by more advanced topics dealing with trees, treemaps, hierarchies, and recursion (Chapter 7), plus graphs and networks (Chapter 8).

This site is used for follow-up code and writing about related topics.