Skill share session 3: Infogr.am

Data Journalism PH is still underway — and for week three of our remote skill share session, Nika Aleksejeva introduces us to Infogr.am, a fun and powerful web-based data visualisation tool. That is quite a combination! Another plus is, you can sign up for free.

Nika did not stop at showing us what Infogr.am can do, but discussed with the participants the do’s and don’ts of dataviz.

My favourite takeaway? The reminder to keep it simple. This is the dataviz version of news writing’s keep it brief and concise.  Chart junk is my weakness, but I’ve been more conscious about this, thanks to reading the Strunk and White of dataviz aka Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

 

Nika’s presentation drove the point ‘less is more’  home. The impulse is to include everything and anything, but instead of telling a story, you might end up just confusing your readers.

After the skill share, it was hands-on time. I always feel so giddy about the hands-on part I feel like a child in a sweetshop. Here are my first couple of charts, but this is a work in progress!

I’m playing around with Infogr.am and trying to figure out how to customise the increments (if I can). Ideally, I’d like to keep them between 4-8 (this is my FT persona talking) so it would be simpler.

Here is the remote session recording if you’re interested to learn more.

If you want more dataviz discussion and tips, Data Journalism PH has a resource page where all our skill shares are accessible.

Hx

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