I am a new college grad, and have been interested in infographics/graphic design for a while now. I like to play around with it on my own, but I have very little actual experience (my degree is in History). I'm wondering what kind of education you might recommend to get some training in the programming, analysis, and design aspects of infographics. Masters programs? Design school? Just learning the software and trying to find internships?
FlowingData Forums » Data Visualization
What kind of education do you recommend?
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Hey abw, you'll probably get a lot out of taking some design classes to learn the necessary skills (e.g. Adobe Illustrator). Of course, you might be able to learn just as well on your own, depending on your learning style. Personally, I got my start with an internship, but I think that might have been a rare case.
If it's of any encouragement, almost everyone I worked with during my internship did not have a degree in design.
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nathany - you mentioned that most people you worked with in your internship did not hae a design education. what kind of education DID they have, typically?
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Hmm... it was really all over the place. Political science, history, computer science, statistics, geography...
It clearly doesn't take an education in design to be good at it as these people are all working for the best in the business.
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thats interesting. i guess it shouldnt come as surprise though, since it's such a specialized field. i would imagine there arent many data visualization graduate degree programs, right?
so if formal education isnt the way people get into the field, what is? just sit down and learn as many useful programs as possible? take classes? are there even classes?appreciate any advice.
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Not to toot my own horn, but Informatics was my degree. Depending on your specialization, you can get all the way up through a PhD in this major, which I usually tell people is "problem solving." Toot toot.
Informatics at Indiana University (where I went) lets you get a cognate in just about any other school at IU, be it business, chemistry, or fine arts. I suspect the last item on that list would be of interest to you.
Hope this helps. If it's not the answer, it may at least be a starting point.
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I'll look around the websites of schools in Boston. Thanks.
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Thanks, jpalmer. To extend on that, I know of people in information science and statistics who are in the data viz. There's also computer science and user interaction folks. If you're based in Boston, there's the MIT Media Lab and Social Media group. Lots of good stuff coming out of there.
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If you're interested in history, you might want to look at a school with a program in digital history or digital humanities. I'd also suggest you learn a programming language (it doesn't really matter which one) - it will come in handy if you start to develop your own visualisation tools.
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Thanks everybody. Good suggestions. I work in public policy/politics/government, so I'm interested in applying data visualization there.
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I just remembered this post on infosthetics. The comments are really helpful:
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This looks like an interesting Masters degree:
http://ualr.edu/informationquality/masters/msiq-curriculum/Found via
http://www.dataqualitypro.com/data-quality-home/interview-with-john-talburt-discussing-data-quality-educatio.html
(contains a video interview with a professor about the degree) -
I have a degree in media communications. I did not have a degree in graphic design when I was put into the position to do information design. However, as this field emerges stronger each year, I suspect the baseline will be much higher each year, and some sort of specific education might become the norm.
Although I was hired to do information design, I felt that a design degree would fill in the gaps and give me a good base [to argue my ideas better]. Thus, I am working on a degree in graphic design (at night from a non-impressive school... but I already have a degree so I don't care that much how impressive it is). Doing this second degree has helped immensely, not just to have more sound arguments for design ideas (analysts are REALLY hard to argue with!), but also to inspire stronger creativity in all my work.
UW Seattle now offers a degree in visual communication. I think this is the standard major-name; I've seen it elsewhere as well.
There are books available for design practice projects that you could do on your own, which might build some of your program expertise, as well as get a person in the 'design frame of mind.' -
I found this online course at Stanford:http://bmi.stanford.edu/distance-education/. I'm taking a certificate course there in strategy and risk management and find the coursework valuable and not too expensive. You can take the course for credit or for a certificate.
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You can also find open courses here
http://search.mit.edu/search?q=informatics&spell=1&site=ocw&client=mit&getfields=*&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&access=p&proxystylesheet=http://ocw.mit.edu/search/google-ocw.xsl
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A better link to the Stanford courses
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I thought I'd chime in here...
I know it's not entirely necessary, and Nathan already touched on it by mentioning folks with a statistics background, but I do think getting a good footing in mathematics is a big help. I personally did my undergrad work in applied mathematics with an economics slant. While I have continued on by working toward a graduate degree in applied economics I believe the rooting in a lot of maths and stats has made the data side of things a lot easier to wrap my head around.
That being said, the struggle for me has and will continue to be getting the nuts and bolts of good design squared away. Programs like the ones I have been part of put a heavy focus on the econometric work of taking data and telling a story with the numbers, but not so much the act of visualizing that for people who could care less what a p-value is.
For my own part I think a math background can definitely allow one to come up with some really interesting (see: useful) information through data. I guess it really is just a question of where your strengths are as some of us will struggle with that part of the equation (i.e. math/stats) while others like myself have to force the design work a bit to get started.
At any rate, those are my two cents.
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I'd like to revive this post and see if there have been any new certificate / graduate course postings worth a mention.
I found a certificate program at UCSD for someone looking to get a more thorough grounding in statistical methods (link below). Would love to get an opinion on this from someone actively in the data analysis industry, as I am considering signing up.
http://extension.ucsd.edu/programs/index.cfm?vaction=certdetail&vcertificateid=128&vstudyareaid=14
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