Additional Links
Data Journalism at the Guardian
NSA Files: Decoded
NY Times Data Visualizations
FiveThirtyEight
The Pudding
Mapping the 2016 Election
NY Times Fraction of a Second
Listen to Wikipedia
Roopa Vasudevan
Josh Begley
Rafael Lozano Hemmer
Dan Goods
Refik Anadol
Datavisual
Guest Speaker
Mark Schifferli of Fathom Design talks about the work that Fathom does with data visualization and building data run platforms. Watch video below.
Today we will be discussing the difference between data visualization and an infographic. We will also be talking about how design can help the infographic and when it can just turn into “chartjunk” and distract the user from understanding the data.
When it really comes down to it data visualization is all about clearly telling the data’s story. Because there are so many interesting data points available to us now, journalists are using this data as facts supporting their story. Today we will talk about how multiple data points can work together to help support an over arching story.
We will also be talking about the data visualization software I created called Datavisual. This tool makes it easy to design charts, graphs and maps for both print and web applications. We will be talking about how to create a bar chart, pie chart, choropleth map, centroid map and geo location map; how to upload data and export a PNG image, vector SVG and PDF as well as a interactive web-embed.
In Class Assignment & Homework
Reading: Chapter “The Complexity Challenge: Presentation and Exploration”, pages 73-86
Continue working on your infographic. When complete save it as a PDF for our midterm presentations in two weeks. You must use either (or both) the Illustrator graphing tool or Datavisual to create any data driven graphics (charts, graphs and maps). Please design the over all layout to reflect the overarching theme, think about color, iconography, typography to support your designs. I would suggest using either InDesign or Illustrator for the overall layout. It must be at least 20″ x 30″ and exported as a PDF to be shared and presented on our Slack channel during week 7.