--- title: A Blog About Innovation Management, Data, and Creativity from Exaptive | Jeff Johnston description: Jeff is a designer, computational artist, and software architect. He cofounded Black Box Games, later acquired by EA, and built the groundbreaking physics engine for Need for Speed. Since shifting his focus to art, data visualization, and data-oriented architecture, Jeff has had his work featured everywhere from nightclubs to CNN. Check out his work at www.semilattice.net. --- [![exaptive logo](https://exaptive.com/hubfs/Marketing%20Repo/logos/site-logo.svg)](https://www.exaptive.com/) - [Exaptation](https://www.exaptive.com/exaptations) - Products - [Exaptive Studio](https://www.exaptive.com/exaptive-studio) - [Exaptive Cognitive City](https://www.exaptive.com/cognitive-city) - Use Cases - [Innovation Management](https://www.exaptive.com/innovation-management) - [Portfolio Management](https://www.exaptive.com/portfolio-management) - [Community Coordination](https://www.exaptive.com/community-coordinator) - [Free Trial](https://www.exaptive.com/trial) - [Log In](https://my.cognitive.city) # Blog ![Jeff Johnston](https://exaptive.com/hubfs/jeffjohnston.jpg) ## Jeff Johnston Jeff is a designer, computational artist, and software architect. He cofounded Black Box Games, later acquired by EA, and built the groundbreaking physics engine for Need for Speed. Since shifting his focus to art, data visualization, and data-oriented architecture, Jeff has had his work featured everywhere from nightclubs to CNN. Check out his work at www.semilattice.net. Find me on: ### Recent Posts [![](https://exaptive.com/hubfs/hairball.jpg)](https://exaptive.com/blog/embracing-the-hairball) ## [Embracing the Hairball](https://exaptive.com/blog/embracing-the-hairball) Posted by [Jeff Johnston](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/jeff-johnston) on Apr 9, 2015 8:00:00 AM - [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) One of the perennial challenges in visualizing complex networks is dealing with hairballs: how do you draw a network that is so large and densely interconnected that any full rendering of it tends to turn into an inscrutable mess? There are various approaches to addressing this problem: [BioFabric](http://www.biofabric.org), [Hive Plots](http://www.hiveplot.net), and [many others](https://eagereyes.org/techniques/graphs-hairball). Most involve very different visual abstractions for the network. [Read More »](https://exaptive.com/blog/embracing-the-hairball) [1](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/jeff-johnston/page/1) ### Recent Posts ### Posts by Author - [AIBS BioScience Talks (1)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/aibs-bioscience-talks) - [Alanna Riederer (1)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/alanna-riederer) - [Austin Schwinn (2)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/austin-schwinn) - [Clive Higgins (3)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/clive-higgins) - [Dave King (7)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/dave-king) - [Derek Grape (2)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/derek-grape) - [Dr. Alicia Knoedler (2)](https://exaptive.com/blog/author/dr-alicia-knoedler) - [Frank D. 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