27/02/2009

Malofiej 17. The speakers and their conferences



The conferences of Malofiej 17 have names and are scheduled. You can take a glance to the complete program in PDF and the inscription form.

These are the conferences:

THURSDAY, MARCH 26th

9.15 h. Guillermo Nagore (Creative Director at SYPartners)
Using information design to (really) help transform bussiness
Guillermo has been freelance Art Director for The New York Times, one company where infographics have been a differenciator factor that has helped nytimes.com to be the internet emdia reference. Now he is Creative Director at a business that wrks with clients such as Facebook, eBay, Apple, CocaCola, Nike, IBM, Disney...

10.15 h. Brian Rea (Freelance Illustrator)
Op Art: What you say + What you know x pictures
Another former Art Director of The New York Times, where he ruled the Op-Ed section. Under his 'reign' the section has called the attention of the infographics world with its 'Op-Charts'. Including one of the most discussed graphics of these lasts years



11.45 h. Aaron Pilhofer (Editor dof Interactive News Technologies at The New York Times)
Building effective interactives online
Keeping the NYT mood of the morning, justified by the supremacy of the Gray Lady on infographics lately. You can start reading his opinions here and here.

12.45 h. Tom Kennedy (Managing Editor for multimedia at Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive)
Creating a culture where multimedia can flourish
Tom Kennedy manages the are where talents as Xocas have flourished, although he arrived there pretty mature. The way the greenhouse works, on this coference.

16.15 h. Antonio Alonso (Infographics journalist at El País)
Non-programmed operations
One of the classics of the spanish infographics will explain how to deal with breaking news. Another reason to celebrate the return of El País to Malofiej.

17.15 h. Juantxo Cruz (Infographics Director at El Mundo)
The integration model at El Mundo
Some years ago, El Mundo integrated the online and print infographics sections with an only head. Thsi head is whois coming to explain how is the integration working.

18.45 h. Michael Stoll (Professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Augsburg, Department of Design)
Mothership?,Can you hear me? Some thoughts about the future of infographics
Professor Stoll is one of the most active academics on infographics. A good example: Malofiej will take place in a month a he has already released a
Flick pool of the event.


FRIDAY, MARCH 27th

9.15 h. Luis Chumpitaz (Graphics Director at Arab Media Group, Dubai)
Middle East infographic incursion
Luis Chumpitaz is peruvian and he's succesing with his graphics department, as the SND has recognized awarding infographics works of the three Arab Media Group newspapers. How to design for a different cuture with a different alphabet will be the leit motiv of the conference.



10.15 h. Fabio Sales (Art Director at O Estado de Sao Paulo)
How to change the newsroom's visual culture
... Or any infographics journalist's dream. Brazil is one of the boiling points of infographis of the moment, so keep ears wide open to know what's on the fire.

11.45 h. Amanda Cox (nytimes.com)
Looking for patterns: Why we should throw away more data
One of the conferences of the year. Database specialist of the media who is showing everyone the best way to deal with them come to tell the best way to use data. When eveybody is talking about the exhaustivity of the information used on nytimes.com infographics, they come to tell how to edit.

12.45 h. Geoff McGhee (lemonde.fr)
Democratizing online graphics
Geoff, one of the instructors at Interact Don't Tell, migrated from nytimes.com to lemonde.fr. The contents of his area at Le Monde are closed (paid access), so this conference promise new things... Great expectations.

18.00 h. Gabriel Dance (nytimes.com)
Producing multimedia for The New York Times
To complete the three aces of the afternoon, one of the new young (but senior) values of the Grey Lady will explain his work. Good to know what's behind this team of geniuses.

Bye bye Rocky




After 149 years, the Rocky Mountain News and its great front pages won't be again at the newstands.

21/02/2009

SND 30. The awards

UPDATED: Added the awards of Welt am Sonntag and Presente

The SND has uploaded the database with the awards of this year. These are the winners on the infographics categories. I've added some expamples and I will upload more on the next days:

INFOGRAPHICS

Clarín Argentina
2 SILVERS, 3 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
Silver. Non-breaking news (+175.000) El Cóndor Andino
Silver. Non-breaking news (+175.000) La Ballena Franca Austral
AOE. Maps (+175.000) El deshielo de la Antártida
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) La Antorcha Olímpica
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) El pingüino de Magallanes



Washington Post USA
1 SILVER, 1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Silver. Non-breaking news (+175.000) The locker room
AOE. Maps (+175.000) Fireworks light up the night



Al Bayan Dubai
1 SILVER
Silver. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) The Flag

Denver Post USA
1 SILVER
Silver. Non-breaking news (+175.000) How the race was won


The New York Times USA
6 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Mapping the human diseasome- Online graphic
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) In the shadow of foreclosures
AOE. Maps (+175.000) In a decisive victory, Obama reshapes the electoral map
AOE. Charts (+175.000) Ebb and flow at the box office. Online graphic
AOE. Charts (+175.000) The words they used
AOE. Charts (+175.000) All of inflation’s little parts. Online graphic







Emarat Al Youm Dubai
2 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) Falconry
AOE. Breaking news (50.000-175.000) Biggest car accident in Abu Dhabi






South Florida Sun Sentinel USA
2 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) A bridge to behold
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Ford T






Charlotte Observer USA
2 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Maps (+175.000) How America Voted
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) An Epidemic of Pain

Día Brazil
2 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) 200 Anos
AOE. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) 200 Anos

Periódico Quequi Quintana Roo Mexico
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (<50.000) Éxodo Masivo



Presente Mexico
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (<50.000) Speechless technology



Emirates 24/7 Dubai
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) The Queen is coming



Expresso Portugal
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) A Grande Mentira




Mundo Deportivo Spain
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Maps (50.000-175.000) Volvo Ocean Race 2008

La Nación Argentina
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) El bandoneon

National Post Canada
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Follow the shoes

Toronto Star Canada
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Maps (+175.000) The Greater Toronto Coast

Welt am Sonntag Germany
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Berlin, the world is watching you



Columbus Dispatch USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Goodnight, Moon



Houston Chronicle USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) A look inside the new co-Cathedral



Courier Journal USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Horse breakdowns

Plain Dealer USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Repairing the trauma

The Oregonian USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Maps (+175.000) Gorge Hikes

Chicago Tribune USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Breaking News (+175.000) A Historic Race

Los Angeles Times USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news (+175.000) Going large in search of tiny

Wall Street Journal USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Charts (+175.000) Who are you calling old


PORTFOLIOS

La Voz del Interior Argentina. Staff
1 SILVER, 1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Silver. Non-breaking news (50.000-175.000) Maravillas de Córdoba hechas por el hombre
AOE. Non-breaking news. (50.000-175.000) Maravillas naturales de Córdoba







The New York Times USA. Staff
3 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000)
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000)
AOE. Coverage. (+175.000) Financial crisis

La Nación Argentina. Staff
2 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000) Espíritu Olímpico
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000) Espíritu Olímpico

Chinese Bussiness Morning News China. Staff
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000) Understand Olympic Games

Clarín Argentina. Staff
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000)

El Mundo Spain. Rafa Estrada
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000)









Extra Brazil. Ary Moraes
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Non-breaking news. (+175.000)

Los Angeles Times USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Coverage. (+175.000) Big Burn

Washington Post USA
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Coverage. (+175.000)

Periódico Quequi Quintana Roo Mexico. Gonzalo Hernández.
1 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
AOE. Breaking News (<50.000)

Congratlitions to all the winners! And don't forget the send the awarded graphics if you got'em

17/02/2009

NewsPageDesigner under construction

Maybe you've tried today (withut any success) to access NewsPageDesigner. Charles Apple explains the reasons on his blog. As we knew months ago, NPD has to change its servers. At this time they are on the process, and so it could stay two months.
Meanwhile, if you're interested, you can upload your works to the Infographics News Flickr group. It's not the same, but is somewhere to save your work until NPD will be back.

16/02/2009

Great comparisons. Actual size whales

The only problem that I think that online graphics could have is that showing actual size could be a problem. But the WDCS wants us to see aactual size whale online.I don't know how they made it and I have my doubts about if it's really the actual size. But they really show the idea they wanted to communicate.



Antonio Martínez showed me the link.

Fucking scales! Shit happens in Venezuela too



Nicolás Ramallo sends me this front page of the venezuelan daily Últimas Noticias with the results of the last referendum. You can see the fornt page clean at the left. at the right, marked with red, the size that the 'no' bar should have. Ultimas Noticias wanted the 'Si' (yes), as you may have supposed.

My last print graphic



Some pieces recovered, some new. This was my last print graphic. As I told you before, today was my first day at lainformacion.com, a project waiting to be released in some weeks...

13/02/2009

Visualizing web 2.0

It took me a while to find how to use Twitter beyond self promotion, but once I did I'm really a fan of it. As web media and wit a very simple structure, their contents are easy to classify and find ways to 'play' with them, on visualizations over any other way. I could find at the spaninsh blogMicrosiervos one of these tools, called Twitter Venn, that allow you to create Venn diagrams with what is happening on this microblogging service.



Flowing Data also shows another 17 ways to visualize Twitter data: relationships, messages, geolocalization, schedules...



And not just Twitter can offer this kind of information. Digg has it own visualization labs (Digg Labs), which show the content generated by its users live. My favourite is 'Stack' and its diggs rain.



Microsoft has also its own lab, but rather directed to tools than vsualizations. Anyway, some of them as Photosynth, which allows you to create 360º enviroments just with some photos, is very useful for infographic journalists. On the visualization section we have Social Streams, that shows you what's on the social media. They opeend to public a tool based on it, called Political Streams, but I must confess that I have not find how to access it yet.



More easy to find and use are some Facebook tools. For example, theNexus wheel of relationships. As any graphic, that way of showing things make you notice things you won't discover other ways.



For example, on my own graphic the upper part of the wheel are my personal realtionships. The opposite are the professional (although both worlds use to be the same many times), The people in the middle are mostly colleagues of the University, which are links between both worlds. You can discover how some peple is connected in so many ways you couldn't even imagine.

As these are hundreds of examples. The information, each time more accessible and stored is easier to understand if we manage to visualize it.

If you like this kind of data, don't forget to visit infosthetics.

09/02/2009

Fucking scales! Sometimes we're part of the problem

Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, spanish politician of the Popular Party (opposition), showed this graphic to the press talking about the evolution of the unemployment in Spain.



If you know the data, it's easy to see that the scales don't fit. It looks like there are three times more unemployeds than one year ago. (which is not true).
It's just another visual lie, used so many times by politicians or businees men. If we take a look to the real scale between both bars, the actual difference would be this:



A great difference anyway, with no need of lies. But this is not the first time we see something like this.



And another detail: on both cases (both of the Popular party), they use the blue for the good data (blue is the colorr associated with theire party), and red for the bad ones (used by the socialist party).

But media is not innocent here...We have our own history of lies. On example: for the same data, El Periódico de Catalunya, a newspaper which is against the popular party, published this graphic on the frontpage.



A trick much bigger than the first one. But we (or better said, our editors) use to like the dramatic changes, even when they don't exist.

04/02/2009

Change

I leave Público and start a new adventure at www.lainformación.com. This is a new project, completely online, with the guiding of Mario Tascón and Vanessa Jiménez and that will be released in some weeks.

With Público I leave the print newspapers, very good friends, colleagues and great moments, although I think they won't miss me much, because they are some of the bests nowadays (and this is not just words, just take a glace and you will recognize them by their jobs).
Teh change doesn't come because I wanted to leave Público, but because I think is the perfect moment to keep learning and start a very tempting project.

So, from this moment you can have www.lainformacion.com saved on your bookmarks.

(Sorry, but mosts of the previous links are in spanish...)

More information
- Hoja de ruta (Spanish)
- Diximedia Digital (English)

02/02/2009

Mantras (IV). Interactive news team


From left to right, Gabriel Dance, Matthew Ericson, Steve Duenes, Aaron Pilhofer and Andrew DeVigal

Sentences (and photo) from the section Talk to the newsroom of nytimes.com


"Good interactive design means a lot of different things. (...) I think they're successful for a number of reasons, but certainly one of their achievements is to make it very clear to readers what to expect when interacting with the site."
Steve Duenes

"Readers don't want to spend a lot of time figuring out how something works. Even when there's a lot of data, the interface should be designed so that the content is easily accessible"
Steve Duenes

"The guiding principle when developing an interactive is usability. (...) And if people aren't looking at the content, it doesn't really matter how "cool" the interface is"
Gabriel Dance

"There are two incredible resources I have available to me at The New York Times: the journalists and our readers. Lately we've been exploring different ways to play to the strengths of both groups. It's a delicate balance, we want to exercise our journalists' strengths (reporting, informing, storytelling) while at the same time allowing our readers to participate, and if possible, contribute."
Gabriel Dance

Malofiej 17 introduces its speakers

Then programme for the next Malofiej Summit is already available, you can read it directly here.

The workshops will take place on March 23, 24 and 25th, and the instructors will be this serie f stars: John Grimwade (Condé Nast), Juan Velasco (National Geographic), Alberto Cairo (Chapel Hill University) and Geoff McGhee (Le Monde).

The World Summit will be in march 26 and 27th (there will be a cocktail the 25th at the evening). The speakers of this years show the new trends of infographics, with a big presence of professionals from USA and focused on online infographics:

- Antonio Alonso. A classic of the infographics department of El País (Spain)
- Luis Chumpitaz . This peruvian works as graphics editor the Arab Media Group at Dubai, and he can show us how to work in other culture, with different visual references and other alphabet.
- Amanda Cox. Databases specialist of nytimes.com
- Juantxo Cruz, Infographis director at El Mundo (Spain)
- Gabriel Dance, another rising star from nytimes.com
- Tom Kennedy. Managing Editor at washingtonpost.com
- Aaron Pilhofer, Interactive Newsroom Technologies Editor at nytimes.com
- Brian Rea, freelance illustrator and Art Director for the Opinion section at the Grey Lady, when the Op-Charts were introduced.
- Ramón Salaverría, Professor of Information Technologies of the University of Navarre
- Fabio Sales. Art Editor ar O Estado de Sao Paulo (Brazil).
- Michael Stoll. Professor at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Department of Design (Germany).
Guillermo Nagore. Creative Director at SYPartners and previously freelance art director for some clients such as The New York Times.

Hope to see you there. Deadline for incscription is March 18th.

01/02/2009

IL. 'Wired' alla italiana



People use to complain about italian newspaper design, maybe because this is a great country for other kinds of design. But we have always very good exceptions. For example, the magazine of the italian economic newspaper Il Sole 24ore, called IL.

As our main common interest here is infgraphics, here you are some great examples from IL.



Its Art Director is Francesco Franchi, whose Flickr can be seen here, with much more examples of the magazine and it design.



I don't know the situation of graphics in magazines out of Spain (ok, not even in Spain...) but my perception is that it's not easy to see so many graphics in magazines here.



But what I've not seen before on spanish magazines is a bet like that for data visualization, modern style... A kind of what Wired does with Infoporn.



Clean style, great use of color, very smart, interesting data... And not forgetting the small graphics.



This is one of my favourites for the next Malofiej edition, and now more than ever, with the american magazines not so well as the pasts years...



Congratulations to Francesco for the maagzine, its graphics and all this fresh air.