Today we will be going over how to create data graphics in the style of Mona Chalabi. First we will go over Mona’s background and we will walk through an example all together and then you can create your own data graphic!
Explain how the students will learn how to create data visualizations and infographics that are captivating to the audience by completing a tutorial that is inspired by Mona Chalabi’s infographics.
Give a brief history of Mona: Just a brief overview of Mona’s background and identity - she is of Iraqi descent and was born and raised in East London and she draws from her own experience with oppression and Islamophobia due to her identity as a brown Muslim woman. Something she’s mentioned in an interview before is that contrary to the narratives that are spread about Muslims posing a security threat, data actually shows that white terrorism is currently the biggest threat in America.
Show examples of Mona’s graphics:. The graphics she creates tend to have a hand-drawn look and use relevant imagery and icons to draw the audience in and make them more interested in the data she’s presenting. We’re going to imitate this style of data graphic and create a data graphic all together and then you can all create your own after that!
Guide students through the steps of creating a Mona inspired data graphic:
So first, navigate to canva.com and create an account or login to an account if you have one already. I’ll give everyone a few minutes to do that, and then once you’re logged in, click “Create Design” in the top right and then select “Poster” for your new design when the options come up. (wait a minute or two)
Next, we will add text to our new data graphic. Select “Text” in the sidebar on the left and then click “Add a heading”. Then move it to the top of the page and write the heading for our data graphic, which is “Food insecurity of U.S. households with incomes below the Federal poverty line.” Also select the font and size you want - we used “Beth Ellen” font for the more hand-drawn style similar to Mona’s data graphics.
Students can even use the “Magic Media” Feature to create engaging graphics
Now we will add our data chart. Click “Elements” in the sidebar and scroll down a bit until the “Charts” option comes up. Click on “See all” for the Charts option and then it will show you options of chart to add. For this data graphic, we want to add a pie chart so scroll down until you see Pie charts and select the left option.
For the next step, we will edit the data for our pie chart. First change the name of each column - so the first column will be “Food security level” and the second column will be “# of households”. The second column will represent the number of households in the millions. Then, fill out the data for each column like in the picture on the slide. Once you’re finished editing the pie chart data, click settings for the chart and disable the automatic labels so we can add our own later.
For the last step, we want to add extra icons and text to make the data graphic more appealing and interesting to people. First we will add a plate icon over the pie chart. So click on “Elements” again in the sidebar and search for a plate. Select the one you like and resize it so it fits over our pie chart. Make sure to edit the transparency of the plate icon so it doesn’t take away from the data itself. Finally add additional text labels to represent the number of households for each section of the pie chart, along with a legend below the heading to show what each color in the pie chart means. For the legend, select “Shapes” from the Elements and click square, and then change the size and color of the square to match with the colors in the pie chart. We’ll give you a few minutes to add these details and once you’ve added those, you’ve officially completed your first data graphic! (wait a few minutes)