Knight Center offers online course on making animated infographics

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas will be offering a four-week online course on “Interactive Journalism: Animation and Visualization of Data,” in English from November 12 to December 9, 2012. The instructor will be Mariana Santos, motion and interaction designer at The Guardian. Applications are now closed.

This course is intended for designers, illustrators, journalists and developers who enjoy the creative part of the storytelling process. Students will learn how to communicate information through graphic representation, how to create data visualizations, and how to animate infographics.

More details about the course can be found here.

This course has been taught in Portuguese before but this is the first time it will be offered in English. This online course is divided into weekly modules containing multimedia presentations and links to online resources. Most of the course activities can be followed in the days and times more appropriate to each student, and a live webinar will be held each week during the course. Exercises, online discussions and additional assignments will also be part of the curriculum. Participants can expect to spend 10-15 hours per week on the course.

Santos is a motion and interaction designer at The Guardian. She is part of the interactive team at the newspaper. She has a degree in communication design from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. Prior to her work at The Guardian, she worked in animation and graphic design for several other media companies in Europe.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas was created in 2002 by Professor Rosental Alves at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. It was created thanks to generous donation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Center also receives contributions from other donors, including the Open Society Foundations and The University of Texas at Austin. The Center’s main goal is to help journalists in Latin American and the Caribbean improve the quality of journalism in their countries.