By Jonathan Corum

Dec. 15, 2013

Last month I gave a two-day workshop on information design at Gestalten Space in Berlin.

There were eight participants from Germany, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.

I planned eight talks and gave seven: Respect the reader, Sketch and iterate, Let the real world in, Point and annotate, The NYT graphics desk, Tell stories, Be consistent.

Participants worked in pairs and switched partners for every project.

Short exercises included trying to understand, dissect and explain data visualizations from the Information is Beautiful Awards.

We also researched and sketched possible redesigns of a complex interactive graphic about foods and flavor, which was itself based on data from a complicated research paper on flavor networks.

Larger projects involved sketching, building and refining explanatory graphics from a list of possible topics.

Participants chose to make graphics on ant navigation, the ingredients in herbal supplements, dung beetle navigation using the Milky Way, short-track speed skating and fishing policies in the North Atlantic.

Participants worked very hard and barely paused for lunch. At times it felt like we were all working on deadline during a breaking news day at the Times.