Ben Fry's dissertation 'Computational Information Design' [http://benfry.com/phd/ http://benfry.com/phd/] is a great start. He breaks down many of the skills ne

Ben Fry's dissertation 'Computational Information Design' [http://benfry.com/phd/ http://benfry.com/phd/] is a great start. He breaks down many of the skills needed to succeed at information design and processing. He's recently released Mastering Data with O'Reilly, which is essentially an expanded second addition to his dissertation.