If you want your story to create an impact that hits fast but lasts a long time, you might have considered using beautiful visuals using data. Yet how can you ensure you are selecting the right data that conveys your message without overloading your intended audience? How can you build on the basics of using data, to dig deeper into your story, identify your audience, and speak to them directly?
This year, we’re launching a brand new weekend conference, that will bring together the best talent in data visualisation, to allow you to build on your beginner or intermediate understanding of information design, to create presentations that pack a punch, or communicate an essential message with verve and vivacity.
Blending lectures, seminars, activities and between-session homework that will enable you to apply your learnings to your own datasets, this weekend bootcamp will see the impact of your storytelling rise a head above the rest.
Course content
What is information design?: Isabel Meirelles from the University of Boston takes you through the fundamentals of good visual design, and the ways in which cognitive science, human-computer interactions, colour, visual language, cartography and typography affect the ways that we interpret and are influenced by visual messages.
Data exploration and story finding: Adam Frost and Tobias Sturt, data visualisation experts from the Guardian, lead a practical workshop that explores how you can source, clean, analyse and verify your data, and the techniques for finding a compelling story.
What is user-centred design?: Emma Cosh, information designer, takes you through the latest design frameworks and methodologies that put the user at the heart of the story you are visualising, to demonstrate how to create stories that have the power to persuade multiple audiences.
Design and wireframing: In the second workshop of the weekend with Adam Frost and Tobias Sturt, you will apply design principles to develop a static infographic that transforms your data into a visual story, touching on the use of copy to introduce and contextualise your chart.
Bringing visualisations to life with design tools: You will be taken through some of the best work produced by data visualisation practitioners today, covering why they work, what lessons we can learn from them, and how to use these findings to expand your ambition around what you can achieve.
Guided hand-drawn data visualisation exercise: To close the weekend, you’ll have the opportunity to be guided through this sketching activity that will boost your ability to prototype rapidly.
More speakers to be announced
This course is for…
Anyone interested in learning more about the potential of storytelling with data
Anyone who needs to communicate information in their professional role and is looking for more effective and compelling approaches
You will be sent a link to the webinar 2hrs before the start time of 2pm (BST).
Tutor Profiles
Adam Frost was formerly head of data visualisation at the Guardian’s digital agency. He is now content director at Add Two, an agency specialising in data visualisation. His work has appeared on the Guardian, the New Statesman, Buzzfeed and elsewhere. Adam has also produced infographics and interactives for a range of public and private sector clients including the Department for Education, Google and Unilever.
Tobias Sturt was head of creative at the Guardian’s digital agency and is now creative director of Add Two. He has been working in digital storytelling for almost two decades using all kinds of media – from web to TV, games and infographics.
Emma Cosh is a freelance analytics and data visualisation consultant living in the UK. Their work has been featured in The Guardian, and Tor.Com, and been long listed for The Information is Beautiful Awards.
Isabel Meirelles is a designer and educator whose intellectual curiosity lies in the relationships between visual thinking and visual representation. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada. Isabel’s research focuses on the theoretical and experimental examination of the fundamentals underlying how information is structured, represented, and communicated in different media. Meirelles is the author of “Design for Information: An introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices behind effective information visualizations” (Rockport Publishers, 2013).
Details
Date: Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 June 2021
Times: 2pm – 5.15pm (BST) on Saturday, 2pm – 6.15pm (BST) on Sunday
Price: £150 (plus booking fee)
This masterclass is available globally. If you are joining us from outside the United Kingdom, please use this time zone converter to check your local live streaming time.
2pm BST | 3pm CEST | 6am PDT | 9am EDT
Information on Guardian Masterclasses
To contact us, click here. Terms and conditions can be found here.
All Guardian Masterclasses are fully accessible – but please contact us if you have any queries or concerns.
Returns policy
Once a purchase is complete we will not be able to refund you where you do not attend or if you cancel your event booking. Please see our terms and conditions for more information on our refund policy.
