7 - 8 November 2019

The role of Infographics and data visualization in visual story telling.

• Design philosophy. How to attract readers with design and information graphics

• The role of infographics to summarize complex stories, find the key message and present it in an impactful and revealing way. Examples

• What is an infographic and what is not: information and visual insight versus decoration.

• Choosing the right focus, angle and l complexity for your audience. Making it relatable. Providing context and adequate comparisons.

• Overview of trends. Case studies. Action items

• Defining the role and tasks of the graphics team, the designers and the editors / journalists. Collaboration.

 Exercise

- Speed sketching exercise. We take an infographic already done and groups create an alternative presentation, by analyzing the variables and focusing on improving the story. 

Using charts

• Functionality. Finding the most appropriate and revealing chart for a data set.

• Chart types and when/how to use them. Alternatives.

• Key concepts working with numbers

• Design issues with charts. Scales. Legibility. Data distraction. Data distortion. Color.

• Data sources

Quick chart exercises

Participants are shown different data sets with one or multiple variables and must guess and sketch out which type of charts would be best to plot them. 

Using maps

• Geographic maps.

• Thematic or data maps and their essential role in storytelling.

• Types of data maps: choropleth or area maps, dot density maps, bubble maps, flow maps, range maps, heat maps, cartograms, stylized maps, small multiples.

Infographics design

• Best practices to approach the design of storytelling infographics: Hierarchy, content organization, typography. Integration in the page.

• The role of color as a layer of information. Using color strategically.

Hands-on group exercise

Groups will sketch out (by hand) a large infographic with multiple components (Illustrations, maps and charts). During work, we’ll discuss about the content/editorial choices, alternative approaches to showing the data and telling the story, visual choices and overall design issues.

Presentations and critiques of exercises

23 October 2019 

Digital infographics. The mobile first strategy, trends and what user testing tells us

• Mobile-driven graphics, dataviz and animation

• What is new? Less interactivity, more linear storytelling – How the New York Times and other publications are radically changing their visual storytelling. Readers just want to scroll.

• Graphics on web, smartphones and tablets. Differences.

• The mobile first strategy. Readers access content primarily on smartphones. Strategies for graphics on smartphones.

• How readers navigate news sites and graphics. What user testing by The New York Times, National Geographic and BBC News tells us

• Storytelling forms online.

News on the Internet is largely served up as 500-800 word articles – a legacy of newspapers. Although the digital article has been enhanced with new technologies, it still works on the assumption of “one size fits all”. We’ll talk about different ways of telling stories with graphics from simple static images to long format storytelling and expansive multimedia projects. 

Exercise

Smartphone graphic design. Groups will take an existing print infographic and sketch out version optimized for small screen. We’ll discuss choices in editing, navigation and interactivity.

Tools of infographics and data visualization online

• What are the most practical tools used for digital infographics in the newsroom in a fast-paced environment?

Illustrator, Photoshop, Excel, Interactive data visualization and mapping without programming (Tableau, Flourish, Datawrapper), mapping (Arc GIS for Adobe Creative Cloud), D3.js and others.

Animations

• Short explanatory videos that are easy to share and work well in any platform and device are gaining enormous prominence in news sites and social media. How we can use them.?

• Showcase of effective animations in social media

• Creating effective animations: writing a script, storyboarding, finding the right tone and pace (drawing style,

music, audio effects). Ideas and techniques

Social media strategies. The power of infographics and animations to disseminate our

content

• A high percentage of readers will encounter our stories in social media rather than on our site. How we can disseminate our content effectively without losing brand loyalty.

• 3-step strategy for social media: attract – engage - call to action. Graphics for social media need to take stories or graphics that are often complex and deliver a clear and concise key message in one simple image or video.

• Approaches and best practices for different social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, You Tube. What works and what doesn’t

Hands-on exercises: Interactive data visualization with Tableau and Flourish

We’ll do hands-on work on several interactive data visualizations to create online charts and maps from a series of provided Excel datasets, and using the most recent and practical tools.

Hands-on exercises

Participants will sketch out (in paper) two digital versions of the infographics sketched out the previous day:

a) A desktop/tablet/interactive version, with emphasis on user experience and navigation, and methods/ideas to add interactivity to content.

b) A smartphone version optimizing the experience for a small screen.

Presentations and critiques of exercises

Q&A, resources and handouts

Note: This programme can also be offered as in-house workshop