PSFK Conference Speaker Interview: Nick Felton

Nick Felton will be one of the speakers at our upcoming PSFK Conference 2010, taking place on April 9th. Nick is a designer, and the creator of the annual Feltron Report, a detailed review of his life in infographics.

PSFK talked with Nick recently to see what he’s been doing lately.

What are you working on right now?

In the long-term, I am helping out with a redesign of BusinessWeek from the information graphics angle, and working on a book that investigates artistic means of production from antiquity to the present. I’m also working on the API and iPhone application for Daytum.com and designing a few graphics this week for Harvard Business Review, SPIN, Bundle and RISD’s alumni magazine.

The thing that intrigues me the most is the way that people have latched on the concept of the project and made it their own. Daytum is an attempt to popularize the methods of the report, but independently several teachers have turned it into a teaching method for educating students about statistics and graphing. I also receive many emails and links at the beginning of the new year from designers and non-designers who have made their own reports.

The biggest influence on my work at the moment is the visualization language called Processing developed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas. I started to dabble with it at the end of last year, and it’s allowing me to tackle larger data sets in a more efficient way, as well as experiment more with layouts and composition. Previously, I created element in my graphics by hand, while I’m now able to plot large data sets, and tidy up the output. This means that I’m thinking now about composition and layers of information and typography as well as code and data structures.

I’m really excited for the proliferation of sensors on everything and the incredible amount of learning that will come with the information they provide. When we can effortlessly keep track of ourselves, and everything that we create and consume, the stories that they will tell are going to have a profound impact on our lives and behavior.