Dubai: Even in this day of instant communications, the art of visual storytelling can still seem an elaborate process.
At ‘National Geographic’, “It’s a long process... usually several months and during this time a team works hard looking for excellence,” said Fernando Baptista, designer at the magazine. “We work with the best experts, we produce several sketches — sometimes more than 20 — and we can spend days just looking for the information of a small detail.”
But the luxury of time does not apply to all publication categories. According to Deepak Harichandan, Design Editor at the Indian newspaper, ‘The Hindu’, the publication doesn’t have either the time or space to produce elaborate infographics. “The fast and busy Indian marketing business model doesn’t help design to came up with big visual storytelling pages,” said Harichandan, who despite this has introduced more white spaces and visual elements on the pages, something that is really unusual in Indian publications.
They were speaking at the Creative Design Conference and workshop in Dubai, which again proved that the UAE and the region as such is a top destination for creatives to establish a career in the publishing industry.
David Westley, portal manager at ‘Gulf News’ said online designs of the future will need to be adaptive, available on mobile plus tablet and with more personalisation. The biggest bottlenecks remain resources and time.
Bill Gaspard, the ‘China Daily’ Design Director, said China is a place of endless possibilities and it is no different for designers. Infographics remains a big challenge for China publications given the lack of specific training for visual journalists and editors.
The two-day event was supported by Dubai Culture and organised by the Society for News Design.
