Tools and tricks to get your graphics on

By Kara Tabor

Courtesy of Flickr user Intel Free Press

As technology continues to progress at an exponential rate, more and more data is generated in
society. This means that it is increasingly vital for us as journalists learn how to process it and make productive use of it for the public good.

At ONA Mizzou, we have proclaimed this week to be Graphics Week, I present you with a brief rundown of some tools and sources of inspiration for journalists looking to transform data into readable, appealing and informative graphics:

Workshop alert: How to build an interactive map in 60 minutes

By Elise Schmelzer and Andrew Gibson

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Tomi Knuutila

Maybe you want to track all the cool places you've been. Perhaps you want to create an in-depth map that shows today's domestic migration routes, like Forbes did. Or maybe you want to collect and share the best sledding hills in town, like ABC 7 in Detroit.

Whatever your goals may be, having the ability to tap into all the geographic information online is invaluable both inside and outside the newsroom.

Join the Online News Association at Mizzou as journalism professor David Herzog leads a one hour workshop on how to build clickable, customizable maps with Google Fusion Tables. Herzog, also the academic adviser to the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, will highlight his favorite examples of mapping in journalism and briefly introduce other online cartography tools.

• When: 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30
• Where: Microsoft Application Development Lab (42 Walter Williams Hall)