Media and Culture (EL336)

In class, speak for 5-7 minutes about what you learned as you went through the process of creating an infographic. While your oral component does not have to be scripted, I am not interested in hearing you narrate the contents of your infographic. You are welcome to invite the opinions of the class, and use your time for a discussion, but please prepare talking points that prompt engaged conversation from the class.

The theme of your infographic should demonstrate a connection between some important argument from Cognitive Surplus and either the subject of your own term project, or some tool or process that you will use as you work on your term project.

Evaluation Rubric

For your convenience, I’ve pulled the evaluation criteria out of the discursive passages and into a list. I’ve replaced “Thesis” from the last presentation with “Image,” and since the image pretty much IS the body, I’ve created a separate category for “Sources.”

• Topic (Connects Shirkey & the term project and/or skills you will use in your project)
• Image (Quality and design reflect adequate awareness of genre conventions and evidence of new media creation skills)
• Depth (Content rich; more than just a great list with random images, or great images with random details)
• Sources (Carefully cited — not just a list at the bottom of the page, but footnoted so we know where each fact or detail came from)
• Tone (Professional and academic; humor/snark/personal expression don’t outweigh the journalistic value)
• Form/Delivery (Timing, audience engagement, etc.)

Please have a high-quality, content-rich document to present; yet during the presentation, seek out suggestions from the class for how to improve it. (You will be able to revise and resubmit the graphic.)

Tips and examples:

Most info graphics are taller than they are wide, so that the reader will have to scroll through several vertical screens.

Cite your sources. A list of “sources consulted” at the bottom of your graphic is not sufficient; your reader needs to know exactly where each bit of information comes from. (Numbered footnotes would probably be better than sprinkling URLs throughout your document.)

Tips

• Why Your Infographic is Evil and Three Ways to Fix It
• Infographic Tips

Examples

• Social Media Coverage in Football
• Daily Infographic

Update, 28 Mar:

• Designing Quality Infographics: Tips, Resources and Inspiration

More free tools

• The GIMP (has all the features of Adobe Photoshop.)
• Open Office Impress (substitute for PowerPoint — an quick way to overlay text over images)
• Open Office Calc (substitute for Excel — make pie charts, graphs, etc.)
• Open Office Draw (use clipart, create flowcharts, diagrams, rotate images in 3D)
• 7 Free Tools for Creating Great Infographics