Graphic designers, creative professionals, visual journalists, infographists... all of them searching for a common goal: to ensure that information reaches their readers in a clear way. And besides, learning, innovating, launching in search of new technologies, of the latest applications in order to adapt to dramatically-changing times.

This is the brief summary of the first day of conferences held under the ÑH7 Congress, The Best of Newspaper Design Spain & Portugal , which started last Thursday in the Auditorium Santiago Grisolia within the Prince Felipe Museum of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.

Combining old with new ideas. Harnessing the possibilities offered by a newspaper founded in 1903 to implement them in the twenty-first century, creating a reclaimed, redesigned and restructured journal. This newspaper is ABC, and the speaker, Chus Aycart, its Art editor. "The newspaper is not dead, it is alive, in fact it is born and dies every day", he said in his speech. According to Aycart, "we must return to our origins, rise from our ashes. Every day there are new things to be seized. Why not to innovate, if we have the opportunity to do so?"

Ramon Salaverría, Director of Journalistic Processes at the University of Navarra, also believes in that innovation. "There is a process of convergence in newsrooms, reporters and editors from the different platforms will end up working together, but designers will not." To Salaverría, "while the crisis is hitting us hard, we have to think that no evil lasts a hundred years; we must start thinking about what will be the scene of newspaper work when the situation comes better."

Jared Cocken represents the future. In The Wonderfactory they are already designing and producing applications for tablets and iPads. "There is a need to make information more 'human', more enjoyable, more visual and easier to find." But first we must develop strategies "on how we want the media work in these new formats, and think through how and for which platform we will develop an application." The information is not the same if it is addressed to an iPad, an iPhone or an Android-based device. A deep reflection on the workflow is also necessary.

Alfredo Triviño has worked on the redesign of the new ABC. As an expert on print media, he knows that "exporting a journal into a tablet is a temporary solution that is unlikely to work on the long term." He also talked about tablets and iPad applications, specifically applications that News Corporation has created for these tablets. According to him, three events have marked the beginning of a new era: the movie Avatar, the iPad and the new Kinect console. All of them have been able to transform physical and emotional activities into the digital world. "They have revolutionized the way of telling modern stories."

The French newspaper Libération has also transformed -long time ago- the way of telling stories. Alain Blaise, Art Director, and Anne Mattler, designer, showed yesterday in Valencia some of their 'jewels', Libé's special issues. Risky covers transformed in the best obituaries, thematic newspapers, special issues as the ones devoted to the Angoulême Comic Fair ... Libération has achieved among other things having a team of 20 illustrators who are waiting for a call to be assigned a topic, , the 'news of the day' on which to make their drawings. Even Tàpies, the great Catalan artist, received them at his home in Barcelona and painted an alphabet for them with which to begin all the articles of the day. Also Karl Lagerfeld contributes with his talent and illustrates all the newspaper with his sketches. They have even changed the grid of the entire newspaper to give two additional millimetres in size at the express wish of one of their collaborators. Libération specials worth a long time review; they provide great pleasure to the reader.

Eduardo Manso describes himself as "a graphic designer who makes self-taught typography." Despite of this, he has perfectly understood that "typography is one of the hallmarks of a newspaper; one has to make it fit like a glove to the style and needs of the paper it serves." Manso is the creator of award-winning fonts. One of his last works was the font for the new ABC, commissioned by Alfredo Triviño. During his lecture he explained the process of creating a font, the inspirations, the briefing to be performed, studies to be made in order to make the font fit in the project, and so on.

 "Rodrigo Sánchez is probably one of the best cover designers worldwide." That was the presentation by Jaime Serra, head of graphics at La Vanguardia. Sánchez works as Deputy Director of Art at El Mundo; he is responsible for the diverse, unique, interesting and admirable covers of Metropolis magazine. Each of these covers tells a story in itself, beyond the subject to which they refer. Adapting the typography, changing the masthead, creating images from spaghetti or bolts... everything is possible for this leisure magazine from Madrid and for those responsible for its creation.

Jaime Serra writes a weekly column in La Vanguardia, where he uses graphics to tells real, daily stories. But yesterday in Valencia he did much more than just explaining that column. With the support of an audiovisual presentation, he gave us some background on the way he documents and inspires himself and what are their sources to tell those stories on various subjects. Listening to him was absorbing, so it was to see the result of those inspirations on paper afterwards.

Gabi Campanario also tells stories of everyday life, more specifically of Seattle's life. His language is not that of infographics but that of drawing, of illustration. He says that "after several months drawing scenes from Seatte's everyday life -while I was visiting it with my family when we moved there-, I decided to create a blog with the aim of reflecting those scenes." After his initial success, his drawings have become a reference in the city; he gives his view about situations such as closing a bridge and the consequences that this entails for retailers, or what happens when the city runs out of salt to deal with snow. And not only that. He has also created Urban Sketchers, "a global network of correspondents. They are correspondents because, by means of their drawings, they tell us what is happening in their towns, they show us the scenes of everyday life".

Paadín, from Lamosca studio, was the last speaker. His studio has been responsible for running during 152 weeks an infographic, weekly column in La Vanguardia newspaper on various subjects. "We believe in the balance between pure and simple infographics and pure aesthetics, but achieving this balance is a permanent struggle for us." Following the previous examples, Lamosca has also discovered innovation and new technologies, so they have created infographics for the iPad. "We wanted to demonstrate that things that work on paper will also work on an interactive environment." And they work well.

More information:

Opening

First Day

Closure