Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

"We found inspiration in the journals of Dan Eldon, which are some of the most elaborate, moving and personal expressions in publication today. By incorporating collaged visual elements into the design of a mock travel journal, we had now finally arrived at a structure for the narrative that added even more context to either point of view."

That's Josh Goldblum explaining how he built the Ripples of Genocide interactive story project using Angelina Jolie's travel diaries from Africa.

Josh Goldblum is a digital storytelling wizard who founded the design firm, Blue Cadet Interactive. His group specializes in building complex, interactive digital stories--he is setting the standard for how we use digital graphics, photographs, audio, and video to create more complex stories on the web.

Goldblum is our special guest this week, teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
What are the most important web skills that young journalists and creators need now? In your opinion, what are the best programming languages, publishing software and web platforms to know? What's the best way to study these methods (in school or independently)?

Josh Goldblum:
I think it is really important for journalists to know the craft of creating sites or at the very least to know what the tools are capable of. Continue reading...

I spend a big part of my day working in Photoshop and Flash.

Flash is an amazing tool and it has never been easier to learn the ropes. ActionScript, Flash’s coding language, has really become much more standardized and easier to learn in recent versions. I spend a huge amount of time coding ActionScript, even though I have developers it is actually one of my favorite things to do, and knowing the code helps in my design process.

That said, I have absolutely no background in computer science, I didn’t take one relevant CS course in college. I was an English and fine arts major, so I had the words and pictures part down; the coding came later.

I think everyone learns these skills in different ways. At the time I was learning ActionScript I found it really difficult to learn just from the books. I bought a ton of books but I would hit a wall and just get stuck. I think arrays had me stumped for a week, I just couldn’t figure them out.

My strategy, which I think is a good one, is that I hired a tutor. I had this intense two-day Flash course, and after the class I approached the teacher and asked if she would be willing to teach me during her free time. I ended up going to her house on Sundays and evenings, and just learning the ropes. I would take what we covered and try and apply it myself. The next week she would show me how I applied everything wrong and we would go from there.

While now I am pretty comfortable with Flash, I have a similar arrangement with a guy who is an expert at After Effects. One of my designers and I head over to this AE guru’s house every Monday after work and we play with the program for a few hours. I love these programs, to me they are just fantastic toys, so it’s great fun for me to pick up new skills.

Oh, also Lynda.com and gotoandlearn.com have great tutorials. I keep HOW and Print magazine by my bedside, but try to not look at them when I am in the thick of designing a new project, lest I copy another designers work too blatantly.