Infografía 2.0, by Alberto Cairo

September is back, nd of holidays for so many and the start of them for some others. And with september el nuevo libro de Alberto Cairo releases Infografía 2.0, his new book. bad news: it's only in spanish, but if the spanish poet Antonio Machado learnt danish to read Kierkegaard, a good infographics journalist could learn spanish to read Cairo. Anyway, this is just an appertitive for Cairo's bible.

I've been lucky and I've read it, and after doing it I felt like coming back from Malofiej. I didn't mean drunk, if you were thinking so. I mean eager to keep learning and going to job with a new 'hope'. As Xocas says, one of the best things of Alberto is that he is a great teacher.

The book, divided in 4 chapters, conclusions apart, starts talking about infographics from the most basic question: What is it? Alberto bets for the analytic inforgraphics, the infographics focused on information, the facts, the explanations. He avoids the decorative infographics. Later, he speaks about the begginings of infographics on newspapers and its history: Playfair, Minard, Rorick... One of the most interesting points of this chapter it's to see how from the icreation of the fisrt infographics departments we have the burden of the original sin: the conception of the infographics journalist as infographics artist. The graphics as a tool to fill gaps, as a beautiful thing to make pages softer, instead of a journalistic tool or language.
After being introduced on the interactive infographics on a divulgative way, we know how works the best infographics department in the world: The New York Times, with a deep anaysis. Knowing how work them is like an emotional harakiri sometimes, because the great amounts of envy it can cause. But one alwys have things to learn, technichs to apply to our departments, doesn´t matter how small they are.

What I lerant or I got reafirmed after reading this book
- We don't have to think on the reader as a stupid reader. We don't have to give them everything liek they were toddlers. Graphics aren't news for those who don't like to read.
- To get your infographics team respected form the rest of the newspaper, respect may start form ourselves.
- Task organization in a department is basic.
- Online graphics are much more than lineal sequences, but lineal sequences aren't less than other kind of online graphics.
- Being multimedia is not a juxtaposition of media, but integration of them
- And so many things...

Summarizing, I should strongly recommend this book while waiting for its big brother.

If you want to takea look to the first chapters of Infografía 2.0, you can do it at Alberto's web.

Alberto, congratulatiosn for the book.