That's why I'm an infographic journalist

Since I was 10 I used to watch football (soccer) games with a pencil and a paper, drawing the plays, the cnages and the lineups of the teams. Once I noticed that coukld be a profession, I knew which would be my job. I went to the Faculty of Communication of the Universtity of Navarre, home of Malofiej Awards with the idea of becoming a infographics journalist. But was there, as staff student of the Malofiej when everything went really clear and I knew I won't have any other possibility. Some of the infographics I saw there were the cause.

This is the real Britain
Philip J. Green, The Sunday Telegraph


This graphic is the main guilty. When I saw it I discovered what were infographics about: explain things that were impossible to explain by any other way. A proper language, journalistic, and much more efective than text in so many ways. I wanted tio be a journalist. An infographic journalist.
This graphic explain how voted each circunscription on the british general election of 1997. In teh United Kingdom each circunscription chooses a representative. So all of them have the same importance. Here yopu can see the geographic map (on an upper corner) and the 'real' map, and how different they are.
The jury says about it:

It's a very complicated graphic. However, the way in which it was subdivided is pretty interesting. It is a very ambitious graphic but looks rather forced. However, it is an equal area map and of very good quality.

It got a bronze. That year, the Peter Sullivan award (best graphic of the year) was for this ex`lanation of LASIK surgery published on Time Magazine, made by Joe Zeff and Ed Gabel.



My other favourite that year was El Poder de la OTAN (NATO power), made by Rafa Höhr and published on Diario de Cádiz. I am from Cádiz and I was pretty proud of seeing how someone from my homeland was also among the big ones.



That summer I was intern at Diario de Cádiz, my first internship. Rafa Höhr was not there. By that moment, he was working at El Mundo or El País (he changed very soon). But I spent great moments looking at the newspaper archives. Graphics by Rafa Höhr and Rafa Estrada (other of the big ones) were saved on those computers.