David McCandless talks about using data in a visual way.

“Every day, all of us are being blasted by information design. It’s being poured into our eyes through the web. We’re all visualisers now, we’re all demanding a visual aspect to our information.”

McCandless is a journalist who’s obviously taken to data visualisation like a duck to water. Other journalists are finding it much harder.

But it’s not just journalists who need to learn about graphs, infographics, data maps, colour and design. Anyone who creates content on the web needs to think more like a designer.

That is turning at least one received idea on its head. The term “content is king” has often been shorthand for “you forgot about my text when you were designing the website”.

But web writers need to change too. They need to think a little more like designers, and they need to learn to work with designers. They need to understand what possibilities are offered by conveying information graphically rather than in words.