Infographics news

Cairo and Xocas in Mosaic

2009-07-19T11:30:00.002+01:00

Sorry fro being disappeared thes 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"

The most original infographics are not published in newspapers

2009-07-05T17:14:00.002+01:00

Today, when everything is spreading all around the world through internet, when the tools are availabale for everybody and are easier to use, when citizen infographics are a fact, in these days, the most original ideas for infographics are not being published in newspapers, but in blogs, flickr or another personal pages, but with echoes all around the web that make them ananymous most of the times. Here ypu are some examples:

If extraterrestrials are watching our TV, what are they watching now?

Just making an operation with the distance of some stars and planets and the speed of electromagnetic waves, you can have this graphic.

This could be the original source

What do different positions think about different sexual behaviors?

Although you can find several mistakes (Catholic church is not neutral about homosexuality, or that is my perception), the idea is direct and easy to understand.

A possible original source, although it looks like anadaptation.

The browser wars

This one is already a classic.

I found this here

How do you want your coffee?

Another classic, already posted on this blog

This one has father, Lokesh Dhakar.

Graphics for a 4th of July

2009-07-04T10:37:00.007+01:00

Today is Independence Day in USA. It's a great day for them, and that is something you could see on their newspapers. And what do people do in newspapers when they want to do something big but have no news? Graphics. They allow us to use non breaking news data to build a feature that can be really interesting. Here you are some examples.

Our flag, a graphical history
Mike Witrth sends this graphic about the USA national flag

Washington Post and the fireworks
These are examples from other years, but show some good graphics about fireworks.

Any more examples? Send them!

This july, two new infographics workshops

2009-06-29T21:16:00.002+01:00

Two days for july. In Spain that means holidays. But resting is not everything. Is a great opportunity if we want to keep learning. And this july we have two new opportunities: on thios side of the Atlantic and at the other one.

I Workshop of Digital Infographics
Universidade de Minho (Braga, Portugal) July 16-17th

Online infographics workshop corrdinated by Nuno Vargas for people that already know how to use the software.
Teachers 'deluxe': Aitor Eguinoa (90 Grados) and Xaquín González 'Xocas' (The New York Times)
The fee is 250 € (including materials, equipment adn meals) If you want to participate just write a mail to sec-cicom@ics.minho.pt. And hurry up! Just 20 inscriptions accepted!

More details on this PDF

First Workshop for Journalists 2009
Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicación de la Universidad Latina de Panama, July 20-22nd

Teachers this time are also a great value:
- Nelson J. Fernández, Venezuela
- Guillermo Gomez Hill, Mexico
- Guillermo Fernández, Costa Rica
- Gustavo Caravajal, Argentina
- Eduardo Soto, Panama

The prices, cheaper:
- Students of la Latina 65.00 B
- Students from other Universities 85.00 B
- Professionals 110.00 B

More information here (Spanish)

The tragic death of Eleftheros Typos

2009-06-27T15:47:00.003+01:00

Eleftheros Typos, newspaper awarded as best designed of Europe has closed.

I feel this close very near, Eleftheros Typos was my first work as infographics consultant for Innovation. But it's also hard because it was an ended newspaper that came again to life. Who explains this perfectly is who was its Art Director, Spiros Polikandriotis. One of the great helps from inside in the relaunchingand success of the model. He was fired months before ET closed. And it was a big surprise for those who knew him and his great work.

Spiros writes:
"It's not strange at all that the paper closed. ET before the relaunch was selling around 10.000-15.000 a day and 45.000 on Sunday. It was it’s lowest numbers since its birth on 1984. After the relaunch it started rising in circulation reaching 25.000 – 35.000 on the daily and 120.000 on Sunday. These numbers were steady for at least 3-4 months. After that the editorial model changed back to the old ways. And with it slowly came the old numbers, both in circulation and in advertisement."

It's tragic. Because in these bad times is hard to know that one that could be saved has passed away. I just wan t to send a big hug to the infographics section, they showed how believing in change and wanting the change this can be spectacular. They demosntrated that it was possible. From the head of graphics, Kalli Labrou, to the last intern.
Good luck to all them.

lainformacion.com, second month

2009-06-22T21:05:00.002+01:00

My new media, lainformacion.com is two-months old this tuesday 23th. Although I published here asome examples of the first works, now here you are some examples to criticise... You can watch them clicking on the image

La clave de las fusiones entre televisiones
Cuando aún no se sabía que cadenas serían las que se fusionasen en España una vez lo ley lo permitiese, hicimos este gráfico compartivo que mostrara los pros y contras de cada posibilidad en cada aspecto.

Who's who on Lost (this one in english)
As Matthew Fox/Jack was spending some days in Spain, we seized the oportunity to make this graphic with the relationships of the series. Great opportunity to mix work and fun!

Merging tv channels
There was a new law that allowed tv channels to merge and there were a lort of rumors about that. So we made a graphic showing how would work the different possibilities on different fields

Inmigration Explorer in Spain
The same day we decided we will do this graphic, nytimes.com published one with the same idea. What I used was the word 'Explorer', I loved it.

Looking for the black box of the AF447
Another coincidence. When Carlos showed me the sketches of the graphic he was starting, we couldn't imagine that El País will publish hours later (and before than us) a look-alike to what was our graphic (it grew from then).

Hidden Matisse
The Thyssen Museum of Madrid inagurated an exhibition with Matisse works, so we decided to make a graphic container fpr the video and Gigapans.

Hiring player at the soccer league
We had a blog aboutthe soccer summer market, so we summarized (and we keep updating daily) all the operations of the Liga.

Interactive guide of instruments of a Phylarmonic orchestra
Adding to a collection of songs we like at lainformacion.com, we celebrated the European Day of Music with this visual encyclopedia by Carlos Gámez

Crime maps: hyperlocal and global

2009-06-20T09:29:00.000+01:00

Infographics are, in the best cases, very useful. One of the uses that is succeding at this moment is the crime map.

The last one has been nytimes.com, with this graphic about homicides at The Big Apple. Very The Grey Lady style: clean and with a lot of options to choose how to visualize it.

But the first time I saw one was at chicagocrime.org, today inside of the hyperlocal news site everyblock.org. You can take a glance at the Chicago map here

But many times you don't need to cross the Atlantic Ocean to find examples. One of my hometown newspapers, La Voz de Cádiz, has its own criminal map

But there's also the global scale: Wikicrimes.org, a brazilian initiative for the whole world. This is not very popular yet, but it has the potential to become very useful

Because good and useful ideas have no frontiers

Blogs, blogs, blogs

2009-06-19T17:02:00.002+01:00

Another couple of infographics blogs to keep yourself updated

Calendario Visual (spanish)
Diego Sanz Salas, peruvian graphic designer, has started reciently this blog. His style reminds me 'The Guardian' for the typography and Good Magazine for the style

InfographicsGr
Dimitris Kabitis, greek infographics journalist at Eleftheros Typos summarizes graphics from the hellenic conutry on this blog. Not justs his or form his colleagues of newspaper, but from all the newspapers of Greece.

Flying data

2009-06-15T20:42:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately, the graphic about plane crashes are not unusual at or jobs. I am very afraid when I fly, although I use to do it. So, I have a double problem: I have to study WHY the plane crashes happens, so I use to be on the plane, looking through the window for the flaps and slats to be out... scared.

But I have to think on positive things also. So I think, probabilities of dying in a plane crash are very little and with so many flights every day, It would be really bad luck...

All the air routes, by Mario C.E. Freese

Out of gridlock, by John Grimwade

Flight patterns, by Aaron Koblin

Air traffic worldwide, by Zhaw

Publico on Flickr

2009-06-07T16:05:00.003+01:00

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...

Infographics for a birthday

2009-06-06T15:39:00.002+01:00

Golden Section, Jan Schowchow's infographics service, celebrated the 60 years of german democracy with this graphic (click to see it bigger).

Smart, complete, modern... Happy birthday democracy, and congratulations Jan!

Chema Matía and Bea Santacruz leave El Mundo

2009-06-02T21:59:00.002+01:00

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

i from infographics

2009-05-29T10:51:00.004+01:00

Some weeks ago was released in Portugal a new print newspaper (yes, print!), called just i. It's a new InnovAtion project with Sojormedia, where I had a little participation.
But let take a glance to some infographics...

There are two visual journalists in the department: Carlos Monteiro and Ricardo Santos, both form the portuguese newspaper '24 Horas'. The style of infographics follow the general design created by Javier Errea: no fireworks, modern, compact, with cromatic impact but smart. And the Innovation spirit: "newspapers must be daily magazines", as Juan Antonio Giner says.

El Correo: keeping its identity

2009-05-19T21:16:00.002+01:00

Not any infographics department could stand on its feet after losing two stars as Baptista and Zarracina. Many could think that Josemi Benitez (now head of infographics) would have to make big changes.
But the readers of El Correo should be glad. I would, you just have to take a glance to the graphics they make for the last big sport event of the city uploaded by La Buena Prensa.

They keep the illustrated style that placed El Correo among the best newspapers of the world (if we talk about infographics). I think that the style of the graphics of a newspaper should be defined by the newspaper style. So my appaluse to Josemi Benítez and his team!

National Geographic draws in spanish

2009-05-19T08:39:00.002+01:00

I wrote yesterday my first article for 233 grados,the communication blog of Diximedia, editor of lainformacion.com, where I work now. I write about the spanish spekaers of the National Geographic infographics department, that are 4 out of 6 (Juan Velasco, Alejandro Tumas, Fernando G. Baptista and Hiram Enríquez).

The article is wrote in spanish, but here you are some words translated. Anyway, you always can read the complete article

"(The infographic boom of the 90s) created (in Spain) a legion of infographics artists, some of them really good. That was unusual in other places, Spain took advantage of that situation created in the newspapers and got an accumulated empiric knowledge before than the rest of the world"
Alejandro Tumas

About the process to create a graphic for the magazine:
"We have continuous meetings all along the process, with opinions of a lot of people. At the end, we make color tests and refine the design to the most imperceptible detail".
Fernando G. Baptista

You furnish the graphic, I'll furnish the data

2009-05-15T12:51:00.004+01:00

When you make a graphic, as for any kind of information, is dangerous to have a previous idea and not to investigate but to prove it, not to find the truth. Other danger is to, just, not to investigate seriously. The graphic that Matías Cortina sends me looks to be of this kind.

Click on image to see more details)

This graphics has been published in a lot of blogs, to show how the communication is changing. Yes, communication is changing. So we don't need unaccurate graphics to show it. There is a clear data: according to this graphic, nowadays there are more people on social networks that watching TV. Sorry, but I don't think so. There are much more people with TV than with internet. And not everybody on internet access the social networks, so the equation is easy.

Anyway, as Matías Cortina says, the graphic has no sources, and doesn't say whic are the magnitudes (population?)el gráfico no tienen fuente ni indica a qué magnitudes se refiere (¿población?). Matías investigated about it. This is what the author said:

"The graph was based on combination of a lot of things, a number of interviews, general study, general trend movements, my experience etc. I cannot give you a specific source though, because I used none specifically. The graphs before 1990 are all based on interviews, and a large number of Google searches to learn about the history of Newspaper, TV and Radio - and more specifically, what people uses in the past. The graphs from 1998 and up to today, is based on all the things that have happened in the past 11 years, of which I have probably seen 1000 surveys ( it is what I do for a living). And the graph from 2009 and forward is based on what I, and many other people predict will happen in the years to come.
One very important thing though, this is not a reflection of my opinion. This is the result a careful analysis. There are always variations, and different types of people. But I believe that this graph accurately reflects consumer focus."

I agree with Matias: this menas, more or less: "I guessed". Or its look so. But Cortina also asked about the scale:

"I fail to see how the scale of the graph can be seen as a lie. You can clearly see each year. The scale changes because it would be impractical (due to size) to create a graph with one year increments over a span of 220 years - and impossible to dig into if it was in 50 year increments. This way, the graph scale expand or contracts based on the important changes over time - giving you a clearer image of what is happening."

Judge by yourselves. But I may say I don't like it.

Going... coming... staying

2009-05-11T21:57:00.002+01:00

Not even in the middle of this crisis stops the movement of infographics journalists.

By Xocas' twitter (@xocasgv) I knew that Geoff McGhee, former The New York Times and now working as Multimedia Editor at Le Monde (Paris), leaves Europe to go back to USA. He has been awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at the Stanford University. He will study data visualization tools for online jorunalists.
Other of the 12 awarded has been my colleague at InnovAtion Gabriel Sama, who will study about multiplatform publishing systems.

But there also movements here. We have made a new hiring atlainformacion.com. He has said something on his blog already. Carlos Gámez, who was working as head of infographics at ELPAIS.com joins the department of New Narratives, where I am Director.

And, although this is not a hiring, I may tell who happy I feel for The Boston Globe being saved, despite all the job cuts they will have to do. I've never read the paper, but just knowing how Javier Zarracina and hsi team works, is enough.

Why I haven't updated the blog lately

2009-05-10T22:37:00.004+01:00

I'm sorry because I haven't udated the blog as much as I would like lately. These have been the firsts weeks of lainformacion.com (it was released April 23rd) and the launching has teken most of my time. Ans these are my firsts steps online... So I'm going to seize this oportunity to share my firsts works with you, so you can critiquize them with you fiercests words, that0s teh best way to learn... You can access all the graphics done at graficos.lainformacion.com. Or access the RSS here.
Here you are some examples. Click on images to see the graphics.

The newsroom's library
As our first day was the day of the book, we shared with the audiencia our most loved books...

EPA results
The EPA publish the number of unemployed people in Spain, now more than 4 million people. It was our first breaking-news graphic... With the launching we have nothing prepared. So I prepared something the day before, so when the data were released the morning after, we just had to update the new data...

Cleaning the highest building of Spain
Just another way for offering a photogallery...

The way Madrid sounds
UA collaboration with our great video team for the day against the noise.

A map of the Spanish saving banks
Situation of the spanish saving banks, by size and reliability.

So I wait your for your critiques of these graphics or any of all the graphics done at the graphics page.

Good and bad things about collaborative maps

2009-05-06T22:26:00.003+01:00

Google Maps is a great tool, very easy to use. A perfect example of a 2.0 tool, where the user can be also a content creator. That's good. But it has problems, also.

It happened with the swineflu world map. Any citizen of the world could add cases at the beginning. Anyone who saw his neighbour coughin ran to place a pin. Alarming, and not helping as an informative map. Many placed suspicios cases, not so many erased them when they were discarded. In a few days the map was a mees. Now, most of the things are fixed. But it is no more a proper collaborative map. I tried to fix things and it was impossible.

View 2009 H1N1 Flu Outbreak Map in a larger map

But sometimes, having a helping hand from the readers is something wonderful. More if we have someone as filter. A media, as an example. That was what La Voz de Galicia (spain) did with this illegal landfills.

The map absolutely open has more problems. A good example is the infographic journalist map you have on the upper right corner of this blog. Is empty. It has data creted by me and yourselves... but someone entered once ... and erased all the content. I don't think that he/she meant it, but it happened...

I really think that the participation of the readers/users is a great help. Really important for media that want to connect with their audiences. But we are prfoessionals, and we have to offer professional content. We have to check that all the information given by the citizens is true, rigorous.
I say Yes to citizen journalism. Yes to collaboration. But I say No to wait for others to do what we should do.

Bye Bye Portfolio... :(

2009-05-02T11:42:00.003+01:00

Condé Nast edits magazines as Vogue, GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker... But many of us had the name on our heads thanks to Condé Nast Traveler, where John Grimwade has done an incredible work as infographics director for so many years. John was also working on the launching of other magazine of the group, Portfolio, which is closing now.

This is, obviously no good news. Not just because of the people fired, I really liked the style of the online graphics (I didn't have the opportunity of taking a look to any print issue). They were easy to read, clear, with a good use of the visual impact...

This is not the first time I show this graphic on this blog...

And I've always loved the weekly Quiz...

Not eeverything was, in my opinion, high quality. There were some graphics that dind't have the 'class' that this magazine derserved. But there were not many...

I hope they don't quit the web, so I can still take an occasional glance to its great multimedia section.

They're coming...

2009-05-01T11:49:00.003+01:00

They're still stdying but they've been awarded at professional contests and even recognized by Time Magazine.
The new group of Chapel Hill students ar e also high-quality products, as you can see atAlberto Cairo's twitter (@albertocaio).

Ellen Mignoni is an advanced case. She's a postgrade student on her thesis. But this multimedia piece where ALL has been produced by herself is a jewel from the campus.

Monica Ulmanu developed this project. It's not finished, and still need things as a preloader. But as Cairo wonder... What grade does a student project like this deserve?

I'll upload more, but if you're eager to take a look to some more just visit some old examples. And be prepared. Young ones come to stay.

Advices from my first teacher

2009-04-26T16:18:00.004+01:00

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.

Here we are!

2009-04-24T23:13:00.004+01:00

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...

50 great graphics according to Francesco Mugnai

2009-04-22T21:47:00.002+01:00

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.

Mantras: Alberto Cairo

2009-04-20T22:33:00.002+01:00

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...