Graphics Info

First post

Olympics

Hello and welcome to my new blog about information graphics. I will mostly post examples of my own work and some other pieces from our graphics department at the South China Morning Post (SCMP) where I'm currently Graphics Director. 

I thought a good place to start would be to show some of our work for the London Olympics. Here are some examples of ways print graphics were used during our coverage.

During the two weeks running up to the Games we started to run a few slightly off-beat, feature graphics. These were a full broadsheet page each and appeared on the back page of the main news section. This is a spot we've been using regularly to do large stand-alone feature graphics. I'll talk more about our back page infographics in general in another post soon.

The ancient games. 

This graphic (above) by senior infographic artist and illustrator Adolfo Arranz shows one approach we often take. In this case the subject was better suited to a hand-illustrated style of drawing. This graphic shows some of the old events from the ancient Olympics, the venue Olympia and some of the history behind it. This sets the scene and was used as an opener for our coverage.

Evolution of sports

This back page, by myself, shows the history of all sports, number of events in each sport and how they have evolved over time. It also highlights the stranger, short-lived events and retired sports.

Gold medals

And another example by myself shows overall gold medals and which countries dominate each sport and by how much.

Throughout the Games there were also a number of breaking stories and features which required graphics on a daily basis.