Coming in 2025
The Open Visualization Academy is an open source repository of knowledge about information design and data visualization.
Open Visualization Academy
All educational materials in the Open Visualization Academy —video lectures, software tutorials, guided online courses, and more—will be free and open source.
The first educational resources developed by the Open Visualization Academy will be available in the first half of 2025.
Our Mission
The core mission of the Open Visualization Academy is to spread and democratize access to the tools, techniques, and concepts needed to become informed readers and ethical designers of charts, graphs, maps, infographics, and other displays of information.
our goal
The goal of the Open Visualization Academy is to make information design accessible to everyone.
Who is Alberto Cairo?
Alberto Cairo is a journalist, designer, art director, and educator. He’s the Knight Chair in Infographics and Data Visualization at the University of Miami’s School of Communication, and director of Visualization at UM’s Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing.
Learn more
Since the late 1990s, Cairo has led visualization teams in Spain, Brazil, and the United States, and has taught in more than 30 countries. Microsoft has said of him that he “has spent his entire career in the vanguard of visual journalism.”
Cairo has worked as a visualization consultant and instructor for Google, Microsoft, the European Union, the World Bank, and many other companies, international organizations, educational institutions, and governmental entities in the U.S. and abroad.
Cairo is the author of several books about information design and data visualization, such as The Functional Art (2013), The Truthful Art (2016), How Charts Lie (2019), and The Art of Insight (2023).
Coming in 2025
Visualization by: Alberto Cairo
core class
Information Design and Data Visualization
This series of video lectures by Alberto Cairo, introducing the language of visualization, will be the foundation of the Open Visualization Academy.
Coming in 2025
Visualization by: Giorgia Lupi
Lectures
Topics in Information Design and Visualization
A constantly expanding library of in-depth talks and articles by leaders in the field about topics such as exploratory data analysis, accessibility, critical data science, dashboard design, mapping and GIS, generative AI for visualization, and many others.
Coming in 2025
Visualization by: Martin Krzywinski
Tutorials
Information Design and Visualization Software Tools
A library of tutorials that will prioritize open source and free tools, but that will also include commercial software that offers free versions.
Coming in 2025
Annual online guided course
Visualization for Communication
Alberto Cairo, in collaboration with several experts in the field, will host a yearly guided massive open online course about visualization for effective communication.
EVERY YEAR IN MID-NOVEMBER
Annual event
VizUM Symposium
Launched in 2017, VizUM is the University of Miami’s annual symposium celebrating data visualization and information design. Beginning in 2025, it will become part of the Open Visualization Academy.
Coming Soon
Other events
Outlier, Computation + Journalism and Others
Besides the VizUM Symposium, the Open Visualization Academy will host other in-person and virtual talks and conferences every year.
open visualization academy
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