Post wins 28 global design awards; artist Adolfo Arranz's work singled out
28 wins for SCMP at global news design awards, with 18 for Adolfo Arranz
It took Adolfo Arranz one month to draw and organise the information graphic on Hong Kong's "den of sin", the Kowloon Walled City, which was demolished in the early 1990s. At its most crammed, some 500 buildings stood on the 2.7-hectare squatter camp, housing 50,000 people.
A combination of facts, illustrations, charts and numbers, "City of Anarchy" - which was published in the as a full-page infographic in March - won two prizes in this year's Best of News Design competition at the global Society for News Design awards. Adolfo also won a silver medal for his portfolio, and the infographics department as a whole won a judges' special recognition award for its body of work. The also won 26 awards of excellence in the contest, which has been held since 1979. The haul accounted for more than half of the 49 awards given to news outlets from China.
An infographic artist for the for two years, Arranz won 18 of the awards, including the silver medal for portfolio - one of only seven handed out for infographics.
"The challenge is explaining the information you have collected through research to the readers in a visualised way," said Arranz. "For me, it's the most beautiful part of infographics."
Helped by other departments, he spent the best part of a month collecting information and photos of the walled city from online resources and books. "You always learn things you can't learn through other ways," said the 44-year-old Spaniard.
He said he usually started his work having no idea about a subject but would end up having a good understanding of it after his research.
Other infographics by the such as one on late kung fu star Bruce Lee and another on Hong Kong's country parks, and photo packages also won awards. Other winners in China included the , , , and .
Some 1,136 awards were given to media organisations worldwide, led by Canada's , , and