26/04/2009

Advices from my first teacher

My first job as professional, beyond internships, was at La Voz de Galicia, where I met a great team with Xoán González as the department coordinator. He gave me some advices that I still have in my head...

1. First of all: Rigor
During the Prestige disaster all the oil spots we placed on the maps had coordinates to set the right point. Those days, La Voz de Galicia became the reference for the information about the disaster for all the spanish media.
This is absolutely the opposite of ideas I've heard in other places: "If we just say what we really knew we couldn't fill the newspapers". What a scandal!



2. From six unities, people stop calculating
Comparing with 150 or 2000 soccer fields is nonsense. People just imagine a 'big extension', with no difference between both. Six unities is the maximum. And doing the comparison with something unitary is much better.
'As big as Spain' is a good comparison. '90 times the size of Cantabria' is not.

3. Be careful with the arrows
Don't use arrows to speak about things that are not placed anywhere. If a car is cheap, you can't draw it and place an arrow to it. This is an example of what we have to avoid.



4. Don't use too many colors if you don't need them
We have to style colors at La Voz. UA soft one (light ocre) and a other for highlights (red). What we could do just with those we do it just with those. Maybe it looks too extreme, but it created a clear code with the reader... and was also very easy to convert to B&W.


There were much more advices. But these ones stays on my mind every time I make a graphic.

25/04/2009

Here we are!

This last thursday was the first day of lainformacion.com, the new web that pays-my-bills... It's an online-only media and we are still in our firsts steps...


¿Qué es Lainformacion.com? from Lainformacioncom on Vimeo.

These are also my firsts steps with online graphics, in a department (New Narratives) where, at the moment, I'm by myself (this will change soon). So, I encourage you to make please the most fierce critiques to the graphics we have published by now. This is just a little part, our targets will arrive by the ned of this year. As the 'status' we have says, we're still at the 23% of our targets.

We're still too young, with many many things to improve and keep growing. We don't want a infographics department, we want a visual stories department. Without frontiers or prejudices: just trying to tell stories on the way the stories deserve to be told. Not taking them to our territory, but going us to where they need us to go.


La Gran Mancha from Lainformacioncom on Vimeo.

There's still a long way to walk...

22/04/2009

50 great graphics according to Francesco Mugnai



Maybe you like some of them, maybe you dislike others. Anyway, is great to have all them together to have a wide angle view of so many different styles. Click on image to access the post.

Armando Sotoca told me about it.

20/04/2009

Mantras: Alberto Cairo

The teacher at Chapell Hill opens a new chapter about the Peter Sullivan (in spanish). Maybe we agree or not with him, but some sentences are clear:

"The problem, which is also a big problem of the journalism infographics from its beginnings, comes when the aesthetic ambition comes before than our main targets as communicators: to make easy the comprehension and exploration of the data, to be trustworthy, to have rigor, to be accurate. Don't let the technical matters be a barrier between message and reader, but a channel to drive the first on to the second one."

Other make you think:

"We can have an invasion of visual shocking styles the next months, after having inside the message that the fashion now is to treat data on the most complicated ways if we have an excuse to use some last generation tool"

And some to have on our walls:

"We can't forget who are we talking to when we work at a general information newspaper or magazine: not to specialized audiences with a solid knowledge of the codes used to show the data, but to different kinds people. We've to challenge them, yes, and not to talk to them as fools ("my reader doesn't understand dispersion diagrams": nonsenses), but we can't go too far too fast"

To explain his ideas he gives two great examples of what is right: soldiers dead in Irak and the inmigration data.

The complete article for you, in spanish...

15/04/2009

11/04/2009

Mixing 3d and reality

How did The New Paper this graphic?



With this toy



And this 3d model



The solution on this photo pool by Parka

Via Michael Stoll's Twitter (@mstoll)

Mantras: Joe Lertola's maps



When I was student I worked as staff at the Malofiej awards. I was amazed knowing face to face the big names of infographics. But a bigger surprise came when I saw that those big names were also amazed of knowing their own 'infographics idols'. There I met José Juan Gámez, then Art Director at Recoletos (Marca, Expansion...), but one of those years he was very glad because he could met Joe Lertola, the part of the Time Magazine trio with Ed Gabel and Joe Zeff. They were the big masters of the 3d when it was beginning.



Why am I telling this story? Because I've just rediscovered Joe Lertola when somebody (sorry don't remember who) sent me this link where Sarah Slobin interviewed him for his maps on a cartography serial. You better read it, but here you are some sentences. Taje a look to the maps if you thought that the cartography based on databases was invented by The New York Times...

"Time has a set of scrap books that contain a clipping of every map and graphic ever printed in the magazine. I was impressed by the design and craftsmanship of many of the older maps from the 40s, 50s and 60s. They had a way of painting airbrushed mountain ranges that was striking. That inspired me to work on adding dimension and depth to the maps I worked on."



"The main thing I try to do is present the graphic information as clearly as possible. Each graphic I work on is a fresh problem. I start by trying to get a clear idea of what information we are trying to present. Then I try to apply my sense of what will look good."

09/04/2009

Infographics News in Twitter

I've just opened a Twitter account in english just for infographics. I will tweet links, videos, opinions and posts. If you want to follow...
@infographic

Pipes, flow, streams, erogation...

Some months ago, a colleague was writing a post for his blog about what he called 'pipe graphics'. He meant something like this:



So he asked me about the scientific denomination for them. I was not sure, thinked about Sankey diagram, but I was not sure. As I have Xaquín GV, 'Xocas' on my GTalk, I asked him. After a long chat, and cosulting Matt Ericsson, thinking on possibilities as butterfly diagram or flow graphics, Xocas decided that the best was to use a new name for them (trying to make us the new Tuftes), and gave them the name 'Stream graphics' (NOTE: this is a translation from the spanish 'gráfico de caudales', which could be not very accurate, if anybody thinks that there's a better translation, please let me know).

There were a lot of opinions about the denomination. And different ideas: dendrite diagram, Homi-Homo graphics (HOw Much In, HOw Much Out), Cosmographic graphics (quoting Stovall), 'little arms graphics', gauging graphics...



But one day, waiting for my coffee at the coffee machine of my new job, www.lainformacion.com, I could read that when the machine was preparing the drink, there was a word on the screen: 'Erogando' (erogating). I didn't knew what does the word meant exactly. A colleague searched the definition of 'Erogation', and it was: 'distribution of streams or money'. So, it was clear, the name of these kind of graphics should be Erogation graphics. Another colleague was interviwing Xocas just at that moment, so I told her to tell him about the idea. He liked it, it was more complete.

But my new editor, Mario Tascón (who was infographics journalist on his beginnings) knew about our idea. He thinked that 'flow charts' was better. Maybe more general, but it was the denomination that Harris (Information Graphics) and Bruce Robertson (How to make Charts an diagrams) gave them.

The debate is still open...

05/04/2009

Twitter for infographics journalists

Twitter is the new fashion in online communication. The microblogging service allows a maximum of 140 characters for each message (as the SMS). Here you are a list of accounts owned by infographics journalists or people related with the infographics sphere. I just publish open profiles (not protected), because I think that they won't have a problem with it (Anyway, if someone doen't want his twitter account to appear here, just tell me and I'll erase it). You can also say yours on comments. Some of them are in spanish, and others not very active, but I'll put them here just in case... I begin with my own account...

@chiquiesteban (spanish)
New Narrativws Director at www.lainformacion.com (we'll release the site soon!) and blogger of Infographics News

@vizeds
Twitter of Visual Editors


@alpoma (spanish)
Alejandro Polanco. Writer, programmer and blogger of La Cartoteca, a very intersting cartography site.


@GINER
Juan Antonio Giner, president and founder of InnovAtion Media Consulting, editor of Innovations in newspapers and founder of the Malofiej Awards.

@patrisign (spanish)
Patricia Vicente, freelance infographics journalist. She has just been awarded with a Malofiej mdal for this graphic of the LHC.

@michaelagar
Michael Agar, Head of infographics at the Telegraph Media Group.

@majimeno (spanish)
Miguel Ángel Jimeno, journalism teacher at the University of Navarra and author of La Buena Prensa

@vectart (spanish)
Víctor Caballero, freelance infographics journalists.

@mtascon (spanish)
Mario Tascón, editor of www.lainformacion.com.

@juanvelasco
Juan Velasco, Art Director at National Geographic.

@drewvigal
Andrew DeVigal, Multimedia Editor of The New York Times.

@adrianaalves (portuguese)
Adriana Alves, journalist, student and blogger of Infografia en base de dados.

@karlgude
Karl Gude, former graphics director of Newsweek, now teacher at the Michigan State University.

@valenntinna (spanish)
Valentina Álvarez, graphic designer licensed on Social Communication.

@nunovargas (portuguese)
Nuno Vargas. I don't know exactly his charge, but you surely know him from Malofiej.

@pilhofer
Aron Pilhofer, Interactive Technologies Newsroom Editor of The New York Times.


@JavierZarracina
Javier Zarracina, Infographics director at The Boston Globe.

@shancarter
Shan Carter, Interactive graphics editor at The New York Times.

@xocasgv (spanish)
Xaquín González, Interactive graphics editor at The New York Times and blogger of xocas.com.

@zoopzoop
Peter Ong, Media Consultant at Checkout Australia.

@davegray
Dave Gray, funder of XPlane.

@dorsey
Steve Dorsey, Deputy Presentation and Innovation Editor at Detroit Free Press and secretary of the SND.

@robbmontgomery
Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors.

@bburton
Bonita Burton, AME of Visuals at Sun Sentinel and vicepresident at the SND.

@seanmcnaughton
Sean McNaughton, infographics editor at National Geographic.

@charlesapple
Bonita Burton, blogger of Charles Apple

@charlesmblow
Charles M. Blow, columnist of The New York Times.

@sarahslo
Sarah Slobin, former graphics editor at The New York Times and Fortune.

@teeceeTO
Tonia Cowan, graphics editor at The Globe and Mail.

@skomives
Stephen Komives, design editor at Orlando Sentinel.

@skomives
Stephen Komives, editor de diseño del Orlando Sentinel.

And so many that I have forgotten...

04/04/2009

01/04/2009

The blogs talk: Malofiej 17 and the Peter Sullivan

Every Malofiej has its polemic award. Every year, not everybody agree with the judges, the same happens with the Oscars, the spanish national soccer team or the elections. The infographics blogs discuss now about the Peter Sullivan award to The New York Times. Does 'The Ebb and the flow of Movies' deserve the recognition?



Xocas, infographics editor at The New York Times says about it that "betting for new ways to visualize information works. It's funny. It impacts because shows the evidence of the data on a different way. And it plays with the reader. Faces him, smiles him and makes him smile".

On other hand, Alberto Cairo thinks it is "an ostentation. Maybe it deserves the recognition because of it. Or not" (As clear as just galician people as Alberto can be [ironic]). Gert K. Nielsen on his re-born Visual Journalism makes a similar appreciation, using the adjective 'sexy', but also saying that it could be confusing once you try to understand the precise data.

Myself, as Alberto Cairo remembers, said that the graphic was 'great'. And I'll say the same again. I think is a very good graphic, with big amounts of good data, that allows the user not just to see which were the movies with the best numbers, but also how they got them: with a great first weekend, going step by step, being born again by an award... I have to say that it was not my favourite for Peter Sullivan de este año. But anyone has his own opinion on which should be the one.
My reasons? The difficulty to find the exact data, and a visualization maybe too complicated for the average reader.

I must agree with Cairo on his idea about the change of fashion at infographics criteria: big spectacular double-spreads have lost their space, now occupied by statistical cartography and original database visualizations. Maybe the future is a mix between both. Who could dare to say what will the future has to show?
Many say that this new wave is not infography anymore. That tis is just inforamtion processing, work of developers and creation of software. I do not agree. Infographics are not 'what infographics journalists-artists do'. Infographics are not defined by the creator, but by the result. If it's a visual explanation, with some weird exceptions, for me, it's an infographic: it could be shown as a photo, as an illlustration or even text (as the Word Train by nytimes.com, the one I had on mind for the Peter Sullivan this year).

There will be no Malofiej edition with everybody happy with the judges. So congratulations to all the awarded!