After a great experience last month, we are announcing the next edition of our online Infographics and Data Visualization workshop. Register early and take advantage of our $150 early bird discount.
We are using the same format: the workshop will be split into four 3-hour-long live sessions, on September17, 18, 24 and 25 (Thursday and Friday over two weeks). The schedule is from 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm, U.S. Eastern Time (9:30 am to 12:30 pm Pacific) to accommodate participants in all U.S. time zones. Participants can join us join via Zoom from PC, Mac or mobile devices.
You can read more about the specific content of the workshop in our previous post, and check the detailed schedule and additional information here. And drop us an email anytime at academy@5w-consulting.com if you have any questions.
For some time we had been planning on adding a virtual option to our most popular workshop, the 2-day Infographics and Data Visualization event. We had multiple requests for it over time. After more than 30 in-person workshops in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has given us the final push to organize an online event.
The new 5W Academy workshop will take place via Zoom. It will be split into four 3-hour-long live sessions, on June 18, 19, 25 and 25 (Thursday and Friday over two weeks). The schedule is from 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm, U.S. Eastern Time (9:30 am to 12:30 pm Pacific) to accommodate participants in all U.S. time zones. Participants can join us join from PC, Mac or mobile devices.
This workshop is a comprehensive overview of infographics and data visualization, and tries to mimic the combination of lectures and practical exercises that we use in the in-person workshops, with great feedback from participants so far. Our two instructors have over 50 years of combined experience in the field, and over 100 international awards. We’ll discuss the role of infographics in visual storytelling and guide you to create your own, in print and online. Attendees will do practical sketching exercises for infographics, charts, diagrams, maps and animation storyboards, and create interactive data visualizations with the help of Tableau Public, Flourish and Datawrapper. We’ll see the process behind the creation of infographics and learn about gathering and preparing data, using hierarchy, color, typography, illustration, and narrative to create effective and impactful visual presentations.
The class will offer an overview of essential tools and strategies for creating engaging infographics and data visualization. Multiple award-winning projects will be explained.
This comprehensive workshop is a very practical guide for working designers, entrepreneurs, journalists, educators, and professionals who are interested in developing the skills to create print and interactive information graphics. It combine lectures and practical exercises.
We are looking forward to do more in-person workshops as soon as it’s safe and feasible. Here are some photos of the most recent international workshops we had in Singapore, New Delhi (India) and Beijing (China) for different media and finance clients.
Singapore workshop for DBS Bank (organized by Methodology)New Delhi workshop for India Today, organized by WAN-IFRABeijing workshop for CCTV.com, organized by MediaX
In the last few days we have been busy updating the gallery section of our website with lots of additional samples. It had not been updated in a long time. The new images are a mix of recent and older graphics, including some of the graphics done during my years at National Geographic magazine (For those Nat Geo graphics, sometimes including collaboration with other researchers and artists).
Feel free to navigate to see a range of different types of graphics including charts, diagrams and maps. You can also look by subject or technique, and see examples of branding and graphics style guides from our consulting side. Here are some of the newly uploaded samples, in no particular order (here and on the website, click on any image for a larger version):
We are working on more extensive changes to our website, with a fully responsive and redesigned site coming up before the end of the year. It will include examples of interactive graphics and animations, and this blog will be part of the main site. In the meantime, if you are interested in additional samples or want to get in touch, drop us an email to contact@5wgraphics.com.
We received great feedback from our Washington D.C. workshop last week. A combination of local and out-of-state participants from government agencies, design and advertising studios, NGOs and other organizations got together for two days (photos above and below).
The two-day workshop is a comprehensive introduction to the creation of infographics and data visualization. With a mix of theory and practice, the workshop is aimed at professionals and students interested in developing the skills to produce engaging, insightful visual storytelling with their content. No previous experience with infographics or specialized software is required.
We will learn about gathering and preparing data, the Do’s and Don’ts of working with numerical information and charts, and the principles of visual hierarchy, color, typography, illustration, and narrative to create impactful infographics.
Attendees will sketch out infographics, storyboard motion graphics and create / publish their interactive data visualizations and web maps with the help of Tableau Public, Flourish and other tools for non-programmers.The class will discuss award-winning projects and offer an overview of tools and strategies for creating infographics and data visualization.
After San Francisco, our next workshop will be in Singapore, the next edition of our popular Power of Infographics workshop (May 24-25), hosted by our friends at Methodology.
Learn more about the instructors and schedule of our San Francisco workshop in our page or register directly here. See you soon in California!
I’ll be back in Singapore on May 24-25 teaching a new edition of the 2-day workshop “The Power of Infographics” organized by Methodology. Fortunately, the workshop has continued to be in high demand and is nearing the 10th edition since 2015.
Methodology was co-founded by two of the most talented designers in Singapore: Brian Ling of Design Sojourn and Jackson Tan of Black Design and contemporary art collective Phunk. It organizes public and corporate workshops in Singapore and the rest of South East Asia. “We believe that design can make a positive difference to the world and we seek to be custodians of this change by curating and sharing the world’s best creative ideas and design processes. We collaborate with global leaders at the forefront of design, craft and innovation to develop education programs, workshops, conferences and media.”
The workshop is attended by a mix of professionals including designers, marketers, students, and civil servants from different areas of the government. They are looking for an introduction to visual storytelling and the principles, tools and techniques to find visual insight in our content by using infographics, charts, maps and data visualization (both in print and online).
Register here or contact Methodology at admin@methodology.sg for more information.
I was in Singapore a few days ago teaching a 2-day workshop on Interactive Infographics and Data Visualization for the staff of Mediacorp. The course was organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Mediacorp is the largest media broadcaster in Singapore with multiple radio and television channels (including its flagship Channel NewsAsia, one of the main TV news channels in the world), as well as digital news sites. It’s the main media company in the country along with Singapore Press Holding (SPH), the publisher of Straits Times.
Mediacorp stopped printing its newspaper Today last year and is now entirely focused on digital content, training its news staff to adapt to digital storytelling. Over the two days of the workshop, conducted at the gleaming new Mediacorp campus, teams for digital news in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil language focused on different forms of digital storytelling through infographics and dataviz. We looked at animations and storyboarding, designing graphics for smartphones, concepts of interactivity and navigation in different platforms, graphics in social media, trends in the field, tools of the trade and more. The course involves plenty of hand-sketching to invite participants to focus on brainstorming and analyzing different approaches to telling a story, rather than on software use. But we also had a chance to do some hands-on work creating online data visualizations with free tools that require no coding skills such as Tableau Public and Flourish.
Regarding our own 5W Academy workshop, click here for details on the Washington workshop, and here for the San Francisco workshop
We received great feedback from our NYC workshop in January. A combination of local and out-of-state participants from publishing companies, design studios, NGOs and other organizations got together for two days.
The two-day workshop is a comprehensive introduction to the creation of infographics and data visualization. With a mix of theory and practice, the workshop is aimed at professionals and students interested in developing the skills to produce engaging, insightful visual storytelling with their content.
We will learn how to gather and prepare data, the Do’s and Dont’s of working with numerical information and charts, and the principles of visual hierarchy, color, typography, illustration, and narrative to create impactful infographics.
Attendees will sketch out infographics, storyboard motion graphics and create / publish their interactive data visualizations and web maps with the help of Tableau Public. The class will discuss award-winning projects and offer an overview of tools and strategies for creating infographics and data visualization.
At the same time, we are keeping busy in Asia. We’ll be back in Singapore in late March for a private workshop for a news publisher, working with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). And we’ll be there again in April for a series of public and private workshops hosted Methodology. We’ll publish more details about these events soon!
I’ll be in India on December 12-20 teaching workshops for local newspapers and journalists, organized by WAN-IFRA (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers). This is the schedule:
December 13, Bangalore: One-day print infographics for Prajavani (Kannada language daily newspaper) and Deccan Herald (English daily).
December 14-15, Hyderabad: Two-day public workshop on infographics and data visualization (one day print, one day online).
December 16, 17, and 19, Kottayam (Kerala state): Three-day workshop with two days of online infographics and one day of print infographics for Malayala Manorama Daily (Malayalam language newspaper), The Week (English language magazine) and Manorama online (online portal).
I’m looking forward to look at the quickly changing landscape of Indian infographics after my previous workshops in India almost three years ago.
I’ll be in Taipei next week (Nov 27- Dec 2) teaching a couple of corporate workshops on infographics and data visualization organized by our friends at Methodology, the Singaporean company that organizes excellent public and corporate workshops on different aspects of design and the creative process. The first will be with Gamania Group, a Taiwanese online game and digital entertainment company that is a leader in online gaming in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea and is expanding its reach to news media, mobile payments, e-commerce, crowdfunding, social marketing and more. In addition to the two-day workshop, Gamania will host us for a public talk on infographics.
The second workshop will be with DBS Bank Taiwan. DBS, the largest bank in South East Asia, and Methodology have invited us for a series of workshops in the different DBS headquarters in Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Jakarta, and now it’s Taipei’s turn. As part of DBS’ continuous training, we are aiming at helping their staff understand the potential of infographics and data visualization to bring clarity and insight to their internal and external communications.
Getting started as a a freelancer in the creative field is as rewarding as it is difficult. For most people, it comes with a lot of surprises in terms of having to negotiate contracts, set up realistic pricing, marketing your work and finding clients, networking, tax and legal considerations, etc. It’s often hard to know how to get started. We have seen quite a few small companies and freelancers fail due to all those things that had nothing to do with their excellent work.
With that in mind, we are launching a new one-day workshop: Freelancing Bootcamp, in NYC on January 24th, 2018. Early bird discounts of $100 are available until November 30.
Our instructor is Anna Christian, an award-winning graphic designer with an impressive resume and more than 20 years of successful freelance experience. Read more about Anna in our workshop page.
This intensive workshop will provide you with the core fundamentals needed to start your own freelance business in the creative field. Whether you are a graphic designer, illustrator, digital designer, painter, or any variation of these, the workshop will provide you with the essential tools you need to start your own freelance business. By attending this workshop, you will have an understanding of business finances, how best to set up your business from a tax and legal standpoint, have the background and resources to effectively market your business, as well as have a file cabinet of useful contracts, agreements and forms needed to get on your way to building a successful freelance business.
The workshop will also cover methods of marketing and includes the vital pieces you will need to get your business running. We will cover how to best market your work, how to get set-up in social media marketing, and how to best promote your work via a promotional website. Getting work is the first step. Building a strong business of repeat clientele will make your business thrive. This workshop will offer strategies to retain and build your client-base so that you thrive as a creative freelancer.
Freelancing Bootcamp is one of three workshops we’ll have in January, with the other two focused in Infographics and data visualization: a two-day workshop in NYC on January 22-23, and a one-day worksop in Chicago on January 26.
Register soon to take advantage of the discount, and feel free to contact us with questions at academy@5w-consulting.com or contact@5wgraphics.