Post wins 28 global design awards; artist Adolfo Arranz's work singled out

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 South China Morning Post 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 Post also won 26 awards of excellence in the contest, which has been held since 1979. The Post's haul accounted for more than half of the 49 awards given to news outlets from China.

An infographic artist for the Post 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.