21/ Sleep training, seasons and teenagers

First "Decoded" interview with Alvin Chang.

Welcome to the 21st issue of Nuanced,

After 7 years daydreaming about publishing a Pudding story, last week it finally happened: you can read it here. I also wrote a behind-the-scenes article about the whole process, with links to the original pitch, data, code, designs and some mistakes to avoid.

The past 3 months have been wildly busy, which is why I haven’t been publishing. I’ve been studying at Columbia Journalism School’s Lede program, which I highly recommend to anyone serious about data journalism.

This year’s teachers are stellar: Jonathan Soma, Jeremy Singer-Vine, Leon Yin, Youyou Zhou and Gurman Bhatia.

Inspiration

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In May everyone’s favorite visual story was undoubtedly This is a teenager, by Alvin Chang.

In June I discovered Mathieu Rudaz’ article What’s left of seasons for the Tribune de Geneve, perhaps less seen by foreign journalists but his use of 3D graphics is remarkable.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, the Society for News Design’s 2024 awards are a great source of inspiration.

Decoded

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In a new format I’m calling Decoded, I interviewed Alvin on the making of his visual essay for the Pudding. These interviews will be restricted to 3 questions, drilling into technical or creative solutions that are specific to the author’s project and edited down to a friendlier format of around 10 minutes.

Watch the interview with Alvin to learn about P5.js, Asesprite, ArchieML, turning interactives into video and more!

Curations

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• The journalist’s toolbox

• Convertify, the Figma plugin to transfer vector files to After Effects (sadly another subscription…)

• Overlord, the same function as a script for Illustrator (but with a much better business model)

• Photoviz, the book

• Jonathan Soma’s Youtube Channel

• Eagle, the moodboard app

Thanks for reading!