Some open data publishing principles
This week I’ve started working with the Digital Publishing team at the ONS. They’re currently hard at work on the Data Discovery Alpha exploring how to better support users in finding and accessing...
View ArticleWhat we’ve learnt about building a publishing platform
We’ve written in the past about our decision to build our own publishing platform, and the pros and cons that come with doing this. As a frontend developer, I’ve been maintaining and updating the...
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Hipsters, gin and the Basket of Goods…the making of the movie
By Lisa Jones and Tom Davy OK, so it wasn’t a movie, but it had moving images in it, so that’s close enough in our book. The Basket of Goods and Services has become an unlikely star in the ONS stable,...
View ArticleBack to the future: changing the way we write numbers
Photo by Shawn Nystrand We’re making a change to how we write numbers. Not so much a change as a rethink. Style Council chairwoman Lisa Jones explains why: We deal in numbers every day, so it’s...
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All about image
I’ve been with the ONS coming on 4 years now, and if there is one topic of conversation that can constantly divide opinion then it’s the use of images. As a visual person I know that I need more than...
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ConCon6: making content count
As a somewhat newbie to the Civil Service, when I first heard the words “ConCon6” it is not surprising that my first thoughts were of futuristic spaceships and the sci-fi convention “Comic-Con”. While...
View ArticleThe past, present and future of ONS statistical bulletins
When my colleague Laura Churchill and I joined the ONS editorial team early in 2016, top of our to-do list was to review and improve statistical bulletins. Backdrop to our bulletin work An earlier...
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Making better bulletins – let’s start with what we know
Statistical bulletins are a critical part of what we do at the ONS. They are read by more people than any other part of the website, and have the broadest range of users. And while they have been at...
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Redesigning bulletins (my first, and Benjy’s second, Design Sprint)
As you may have seen from Darren’s blog post, we are focussing on redesigning our statistical bulletins. To kick-start this work, we held a design sprint at the end of April. This was my first design...
View ArticleJoining the Digital Publishing team and what have I learnt so far?
What does a Publishing Officer at the Office for National Statistics do? This is a question that I have been asked by friends and family members a lot since I accepted my offer to become a Publishing...
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What makes for a good scrollytelling article?
Scrollytelling is a new format for the digital content team, and one we are developing in the run up to Census. Our prototype scrollytelling projects include ‘Which jobs are most likely to have seen a...
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How we build scrollytelling articles
TL; DR? Our scrollytelling articles are built with Svelte, Layer Cake and Mapbox GL JS (v1). You can view our template code here, and the full code of our most recent article here. This blog post is...
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Embedding ONS interactives in your website
Here’s a simple guide to embedding our interactive maps and charts and making them responsive, so they look their best on mobiles and tablets and of course on desktop. This guide is suitable for those...
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50 years on: are our digital releases more user-friendly than their print...
As an English literature graduate, I have always associated old, leather-bound books with great works of fiction. But when I stumbled across the Newport office’s very own ONS library, I found grand...
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A week in the life of a census content designer
Earlier this year, I shadowed two senior content designers bringing Census 2021 to life. In the world of census, nothing happens by chance. All decisions are made with users in mind. Every journey and...
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