Five Pinterest boards you may follow if you like infographics

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Pinterest is the new social network in fashion. A visual pinboard with recommendations form your contacts. And a perfect showroom for (static) infographics. These are some of the boards you may follow if you like infographics. Feel free to recommend more in comments or if you think I've forgotten any.

Alberto Cuadra - My graphics - Graphics
Alberto Cuadra works for the Washington Post, in these boards you may find his own works and other infographics he likes.



Boston Globe Infographics
Javier Zarracina, Monica Ulmanu, Patrick Garvin, David Schutz, Daigo Fujiwara and Tom Giratikanon curate this board showing some of the department's works. Some of them also have interesting particular boards as the ones by Zarracina, Ulmanu or Garvin.



Juan Colombato - Infografías/Infographics
Colombato show some of his works at La Voz del Interior. Beautiful handcrafted graphics with the best of the argentinian tradition.





Ben Golder - Illustrations/Measurements
The name of the board is already telling you that you'll find here more things than infographics, but it worths a visit: amazing examples of old and new visual communication pieces.





Linda Eckstein - Malofiej 20 Awards
Some of the graphics awarded at the last edition of the Malofiej are present in this board.

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I'm not including this into the top five, but you can find more graphics (and others) in my own Design/graphics pinterest board.

Amanda Cox: "Shaping data for news"

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Amanda Cox - Eyeo Festival 2011 from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

A very interesting video of Amanda Cox (one of the persons I admire the most in the world of infographics) talking abut her work (and the work of all the infographics team)  in The New York Times.
I think this introduction is more than enough to know this video will be interesting and I don't need to encourage you to watch it!

PS. Thanks to Amanda for her kind words. I can die happy now :)

Those in infographics... and in Google+

Google+ is the new Twitter, the new Facebook... or not.
But, anyway,is the new social network everybody talks about.
If you are one of those early adopters already enjoying it, here you are a list with some people related with infographics you can find in Google+ to create your Infographics circle

Four things you should see if you are an infographics person

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You should visit these five links if you really like infographics, visualizations, visual narratives or however you call it.

10 significant visualisation developments: January to June 2011
Visualising Data

These frists months of 2010 has been really interesting for the graphics world: good works, tools, statements, discussions... Ten of the top worth-visiting liks of the year on VisualisingData.

22 free tools for data visualization and analysis
Computer World

Making graphics and visualizations is getting easier day by day (the quality of interest of those is another discussion). The technological barrier is falling down and now you don't even have to pay for licences. People got plenty of tools online, free and easy to use. From the ones by  the omnipresent Google  (Fusion Tables, Refine...) to others, independent but interesting like Impure.
Here you got a good list with a good bunch of them.

Visual pieces by Antonio Pasagali
lainformacion.com

Antonio Pasagali is Art Director at lainformacion.com, the news web I work for. He has published a couple of Visual Pieces, with really nice aesthetics, but also informative. Something different. And that's a good thing.
1. Pedestrians in New York
2. Madrid-BCN: train and plane

The functional art
Alberto Cairo

Alberto Cairo's book (called in spanish 'El arte funcional' and which could be translated as 'The Functional Art') has become famous before being in the shops. And now it's on its last steps before being released. By the moment, we know that it will be published between spetember and novembre, 2011, at least in spanish. And also what does Nigel Holmes thinks about it:

Welcome to Alberto’s world. Cairo has done it all here: history, theory, practice, examples. And he's done it brilliantly. It's the most comprehensive and sensible book yet on real-world information graphics; we won’t need another for a long time (or until he writes his next one!)"

Do you want to work in Dubai?

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Al Bayan and Emirates 24/7 are two Dubai newspapers with a very good infographics department. The peruvian Luis Chumpitaz leads a great and heterogeneus team, showing every day the quality of their works, winning international awards on each contest they participate.

Now, SND jobs announces two information graphic designers positions in their team. They ask for someone who can talk in english or arabic, with journalistic background. They are also looking for two online developers (AS3-HTML5) and one digital illustrator.

So, if you feel attracted by working in Emirates, with am award-winning team in two quality newspapers, this is your chance.

Working for National Geographic:

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Fernando Baptista, graphics editor at NG, explains it on the spanish blog La Buena Prensa (amazing images...). It's in spanish, but it's Show-Don't-Tell-expalined... So it's worths a visit.

And if, even with those images, you don't get the whole picture, National Geographic has released a video with explanation (click on iamge to watch it at NG's web)

My personal portfolio, in english

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Sorry for the autopromotion. I've just released my personal portfolio in english, at chiquiesteban.com/en.
You can choose graphics by categories (print, online, video...) and tags (3d, science, breaking news...). It's just a selection of my favourite graphics for different reasons.

All kind of critiques are welcome!

Alberto Cairo: "Brazilian infographics have less taboos"

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I think I don't need to introduce Alberto Cairo, but just in case I'll say he's a spanish infographics journalist who has become one of the most important theorical (and practical) leaders of this subject after being head of graphics at elmundo.es, teacher of multimedia infographics at the Univesity of North Carolina Chapel Hill and now director of infographics at Editorial Globo (Brazil).

He has spoken about brazilian graphics on an interesting interview in the spanish communication blog '233 Grados'. But, as a spanish blog, it's written in spanish, so here you are some of the most intersting quotes:

"I don't think Brazil has a different visual culture. It's just they have less taboos with some topics"

"In these years, brazilian infographics have taken a big step forward. Some media are investing in high level professionals"

"In Época, infographics should be considered a journalistic product. That's something new in Brazil, where graphics used to be in hands of designers and illustrators"

World Map of Infographics journalists. Second round.

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Some time ago I started a map showing infographics journalist and departments around the world. It was an open collaborative map, and somebody deleted the data and add oil companies in the south of Spain. I guess it was a mistake, but I lost all the information.

Well, let's try again. Unfortunately, this time it won't be a open map. It's closed and I'm the only one who can update it (although I can give collaborator invitations to those interested). So, if you want to be on the map, just send me an email or write a comment in this post. I will add you to the map. Once it will have enough content, I will publish it on a static place in this web. It's Google Maps, so you can take it to your web too.

The map will show professionals related with infograhics on five different categories:

- Print infographics departments (blue)
- Interactive infographics departments (red)
- Integrated infographics departments (green)
- Freelancers or business (yellow)
- Teachers (purple)

At the moment, I just have some spanish departments and professionals, as a test. I will update it daily, but please be patient. I'm waiting for your maisl and comments. And if you want to be collaborator, just ask me.


Ver Infografistas/Infographic journalists en un mapa más grande

A spaniard making infographics in China

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Xan Sabarís was until last year the head (and only member) at the infographics department of Diario de Pontevedra, a local newspaper in the northwest of Spain. He had worked previously for another newspapers of the Vocento group (which owns ABC, El Correo and others) and La Voz de Galicia. He was publishing really good stuff in Pontevedra. But in 2010 he was hired by a chinese neswspaper, China Daily , based in Beijing and where Bill Gaspard, former SND president, was the Art Director. These are some of his works there.

I asked him a little text explaining is work in a chinese newspaper, how is working in such a different culture and way of working. And these are his words:

"Apart from me, there are three chinese guys in the department. Thay make graphics, but also layouts pf the pages.

Maybe the best word to explain how is working here is 'rough'.
I don't speak or read chinese (but in the newspaper people speak english), and the rythm of work here is very different form the spanish one, at least where I've worked before. We can say China is quiet..."

"The biggest problem is the lack of information. When you need to go further you need speak, most times, with sources abroad.
An advantage is that people is open to new ideas and they take risks. Few newspapers in Spain (maybe none) would risk, not being a special event, to use one of the firsts pages of the newspaper for a big infographic (the one about the skyscrapers)."

"Following the sentences you published some posts ago, here's a chinese one:

I don't remember what was the information about. It was an evolution, year by year, of something. But in all years the values were around 50, and then, one year, it grows to 100, and then the next year comes back to 50.

Me: "What happened here?"

Writer: "Ummm… Dont' know. Doesn't matter, that's not the story".

Here you have some works by Xan and his team. Congratulations to him and all his team.

Nine sentences I've heard being working in newspapers

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Some days ago Clases de Periodismo interviewed me and used one of my sentences for the headline:
“Infographics journalist are often more rigorous than writers".
Some of my writers colleagues have shared with me their disapproval, something I, sincerely, knew that would happen. Of course, this is said ina certain context and is not always true, it's just a generalization. What I wanted to explain is that most of infographics is not treated like information bu writers in many newspapers, meanwhile infographics journalists try to do a journalistic job.
To 'justify' someway this sentence, here you are some examples of sentences I've herad in my short career (here are the sins, but not the sinners):

- "If we would have to check the data there would be no newspapers"


- We have to explain how the bathyscaphe is
- And how it is?
- I don't know, just draw a bathyscaphe


- Infographics journalist: "I need one more year of data"
- Writer: "Just put a little more than the previous year"


- We've got to do a graphic about "...", but we have no data at all.

- Infographics journalist: "So, in order to explain the accident, I need to know where was the car, where the truck, how they crashed..."

- Writrer: "Do we need to know all that? No, no, just draw a crash"

- Writer (after a detailed explanation): "And that is the way the attack happened"
- Infografista: "¿And who is the source"
- Redactor: "Don´t put a source, I'm guessing, but don't worry, I'm pretty sure it was that way"


- "I know that's the real data, but it's not very spectacular... Can't we exaggerate a little?"


- Writer: "If we use the actual data... it's very far from ..."
- Infographics journalist: "But they are very far, that's the information indeed"
- Redactor: "I know, but I think it's better if they're closer"

And the best one...

- "I don't mind the data, but I said just the opposite in my article, so change the graphic or jus delete that data"

Don't worry, all of this problems were solved (not without big fights). 

All of these are things are own experiences or I've been hearing by myself.

UPDATE
Some suggestions:
@albertocairo: "Our reader is idiot"
@ikimartinez: "Do the graphic with balls. It's the fashion now"

The visual story of a street

Great infographic by Xan Sabarís published in Diario de Pontevedra, a local newspaper from the north of Spain. I discovered it at La Buena Prensa and I loved the local touch and the way he explains the rythm of one of the streets of the city. Clear and visual. And completelly elaborated by the infographic journalist. Looking for stories in the street.

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The Malofiej stars: Valiño and Franchi

Menawhile I keep updating the Malofiej winner's post (yes, I'm still on it), here you are a couple of interviews by Kris Viesselman (SND president) on the official page of Society for News Design, to two of the juries and big winners of this edition of Malofiej, Álvaro Valiño (Público, Spain) and Francesco Franchi (IL, Italy)

Álvaro Valiño, Publico, Spain from The Society for News Design on Vimeo.

Francesco Franchi, IL Solo 24 Ore from The Society for News Design on Vimeo.

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Alberto Cairo leaves Chapel Hill

"I guess it's official: I am leaving UNC-Chapel Hill. I'll miss my students and colleagues so much. Forgive me if I sound depressed. I am"

This message was tweeted by Alberto Cairo this last thursday. He was teaching multimedia infographics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, producing a huge number of awesome infographics journalists. I've wrote about them on this blog several times.

I just want to wish Alberto the best luck wherever he would go now. Meanwhile, we'll keep waiting for his new book and what's going on with Visualopolis.

And now, a teacher position in Chapel Hill is open...

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Tomas Ondarra, on the media crisis

Image from Imagen Vasca

Another of the conferences of the World Summit of Press Design in Córdoba was Tomás Ondarra, graphics editor at El País, the most important spanish newspaper. He talked about the media crisis nad, particularly, the crisis of infographics.

I just took note of the main ideas, so these are not quotes, just ideas:

• Our newspapers are going down... and it looks as if we don't care

• In the firsts days of the free newspapers everybody said that they were the futuro and the traditional media were about to dead. And lokk what happened with the free press

  Note: In Spain, the crisis is hitting much harder the free press than the traditional paid media.

• Soitu (a spanish just-online news site) closed some days ago. and its director, Sindo, had always talked about the end of the print media. But the crisis is something that is affecting everybody, not just print media.

• Which are the differences between print and online? The constant updating? The online media do not update everything...

• Is the animated graphic the modern way? They move too much, they come late and many are jut encyclopedics, or better said, 'wikipedics'

• We don't care about the news of the day nowadays. We just go for the big ones, for those that could be awarded

• We use many times a bigg illustration with the data on the side. But we do it on the sports pages. We don't do it in the economy section. If the formula doesn't work on both, it means that that isn't a good way of doing things.

• Now, with The New York Times style ruling, the infoilustration is over. The new multimedia graphics don't have to look for animation, but for interactivity.

• There are many news infographics gurus, but they don't work in newsrooms. And there are no infographics subjects in the spanish universities.

• I don't send works to the awards, I just do it if my department or my director ask me to do so. The first Peter Sullivan Award (the top award at Malofiej) was given to Time Magazine, for a graphic they copied for The New York Times. These years, Jaume Serra was revolutioning infographics. And he never got a Peter Sullivan.

• If you got friends in the jury, is easy not to lose. They don't look at the sources or the dates. They look to the big things, the beautiful. If Sullivan came out of the grave, they would forbid the awards.

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Cairo and Xocas in Mosaic

Sorry for being disappeared these days. You know, the summer, when you have free time you use to try life far from computers. And, also, this week we've been busy with a special about the man on the moon, the new Harry Potter movie (this graphic, in english) and other things.
That's why I'm delayed to tell you that Mosaic, the online magazine of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia) have produced a new issue with the galician infographics dynamic duo Xocas and Alberto Cairo.

They interviewed Xocas and published an article wrote by Cairo. The magazine is in spanish, so I translated the best sentences:


Xaquín G.V.: "Infographics are the brilliant blue in the feathers of a peacock"

"You have to be a good journalist, a great information visualizator and a good supervisor, you must understand and fend infographics as another journalistic genre."

"The multimedia documentarie is the multimedia journalistic genre most underused on mass media"

"Journalist with deep computer programming knowledge are very important"

"Shape should follow content. The beautiest visualizations are so not just for being beautiful, but because their shape makes the content easier to understand."

"Infographics are a hard-to-find and expensive product, but they really differenciates you from the others. The media that will know how to integrate, use and seize graphics will survive in these hostile times of crisis. Multimedia features and interactive graphics are working on NYTimes and they worked in other places before. Infograhics are the brilliant blue in the feathers of a peacock. Can you live without it? Well, if you wnat the specie to survive..."


Alberto Cairo. Visualization and knowledge. A short invitation to infographics

"Graphics works better than a table because, when give a visual shape to data, I'm creating a tool useful to accelerate (and sometimes replace) the processes the brain follow to reach its target"





"A big amount of journalists and readers think you need to draw well to be an infogrpahic journalist. (...) But it is not so for the most basic infographics (...) You can produce great maps and charts just if you draw a cow and people don't think it's a dog"

"If we consider infographics as a just-artistic discipline many people won't get involved on its ellaboration. It is a tool that everybody can handle, very important to communicate some kind of content"

"My personal method when I create infographic projects is very easy. It has three stages: research, planning and final art"

"The complexer the information gets, more basic should be the style to represent it"

"If you really want to become a communicator in this era of readers-creators, take a pencil and give infographics a chance"

Publico on Flickr

My former colleagues of the design department of Publico have uploaded their favourite works on Flickr, the photohosting page. On their user, they've created an album with infographics that deserves the visit...

Chema Matía and Bea Santacruz leave El Mundo

AVE Madrid-Zaragoza, by Chema Matía, from albertocairo.com

These are hard days for media. Owners are cutting jobs, and, although infographics departments are not the worst places to be, (with exceptions as the AJC and some others), there are also some damnified. And two of the lasts cases has been caused at the spanish newspaper El Mundo. The editorial company Unidad Editorial offered thw workers some advantages for those who decide to leave their jobs.Two historical members of the infographics department, Chema Matía and Beatriz Santacruz, decided to leave the place. Although the newspaper tried to keep them in the place, they continued with their idea and now walk free. Good luck for both!


Beatriz Santacruz.


Beatriz Santacruz

Graphics by Beatriz Santacruz from rafaestrada.net

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...

Heraldo de Aragon loses all its infographics journalists

Trafalgar explained by Alberto Aragón

Luis Grañena and Alberto Aragón (Mandrake) have left Heraldo de Aragón,one of the big regional spanish newspapers, to start a new adventure with their new bussiness.
Grañena and Aragón are well known by their graphics, and they won the last gold medal at the ÑH, the awrds organized by the spanish chapter of teh SND to recognize the best design works of the years in Spain and Portugal. But what made them really famous were their illustrations. Local Estudio will be more focused on this discipline, so not just Heraldo de Aragón will miss them, the world of graphics could lose these great values.

Adding to all this, the third person of the departament, Isidro Gil, is now on the design team, so the infographics department is officially over.
This is a very bad new, not just for losing them, but for the sign that the newspaper makes with Gil's changing. They have no intention of hiring people to replace Grañena and Aragón. OK, we're in crisis, but you can't go to war leavibng some of your best weapons bahind. Not a very good example.


The spanish rock band 'Héroes del Silencio' as seen by Luis Grañena