Education Leaders Program / Michael Stoll

“Those who know nothing, have to believe everything.”

– Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Professor Michael Stoll has been teaching media theory and infography in the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences Department of Design since 2005. He now heads the Information Design study track. Michael studied communication design at the University of Applied Sciences in Konstanz, Germany, from 1987 to 1991 and graduated with the thesis "A Classification of Infography.” From 1991 to 2005, he was a freelance designer and infographic artist based in Tbingen. His clients included newspaper publishers in southern Germany. He also held courses in infography at the “Haus Busch” journalism center (Hagen), the IFRA newspaper institute (Darmstadt) and the Akademie der Bayerischen Presse (Munich).

Key study-related activities Stoll offers on a regular basis at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences include field trips to international conferences and partner universities, lectures by leading practitioners and sector-specific exhibitions at the department. His students have won several awards for work they created in his courses, including two silver awards at the Malofiej Competition, one silver award at the SND Annual Competition and two European Newspaper Awards.

He teaches the course “Visual Storytelling with Soundslides and Flash” on a regular basis at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Germany) as part of the bachelor program “Journalism/Digital Media.”

At the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), he regularly teaches the course “Visual Culture: Infography” for the Journalism masters program.

He serves as the International Affairs Educational Director for the Society for News Design (USA) and coordinates the academic exchange between participating universities.

He is also a member of the International Institute for Information Design IIID (Vienna, Austria) and serves on the editorial board of its Information Design Journal.

In 2009, he was jury president for the Malofiej-17 infographics competition at the University of Navarra (Pamplona).

Professor Stoll also collects historic infographics and owns one of biggest collections on the topic. He put together the highlights of his collection for a traveling exhibition called “History of Infographics.”