It was a bold, shiny, red volume in the desk of the director of the section, and it was also our resource to look-after in the rushing times of the daily edition; made of a comfortable blight beige light paper that makes its weight really portable. The editor, Luis Chumpitaz, has brought it from his travels to Argentina, where he met many of the professionals we look after for inspiration in that time. Buenos Aires was like many times, the point of contact with the development at the other side of the Atlantic. Alejandro Tumas, Christian Webb, Pablo Loscri among others were developing the seeds sowed by Jaime Serra during his time as infographic director there and Luis was in direct contact and constant dialogue with them, thus establishing a channel from which feed the references of the section.
I remember also a visual guide of Buenos Aires, made in the fashion of the fampus DK illustrated city guides. Some of the graphic were adapted from DK graphics, some other took that inspiration to grow a new and defined language. Nevertheless, to adapt different graphic traditions to the environment of a newsroom was a task in itself. And why? you would ask, and I will answer that it was there that we learn the inner order of an infographic, the hierarchies, the narrative of the visuals. The graphics are developed all in a similar patter, divided mostly in horizontal levels, read from top to bottom. The header is very dense usually regarding the quantity of information. Usually, a big image is the axis of the page.
The different fragments of the graphic are usually divided by letters or numbers, where timelines, locators and cutout diagrams are placed. For me personally this was a very useful resource because it offers a kind of template that is very dynamic while maintaining unity. As such is an exercise in information design.A defined structure that was used flexibly giving. a sense of the underlying principle of organisation. Diagrams, flowcharts, bar graph, all developed as micropieces of bigger ensembles.
Being of such clear importance to the execution of work, I took a lot of pictures of the graphics inside, which later will come at hand, to use as a guide for my daily work in the headquarters of the newspaper.
The first time I arrived at the section, it was located in a division made of wood-or plywood- in a corner of the building, just in front of the big patio where from night to night, groups of people put together the pages of the newspaper t midnight. This was the backside of the building, while the third floor of the new construction was in development. Because of this, even the newsroom of the journal Correo was in such a situation, which will be later the dining room. at the back of the street. later we moved to the new part of the building, in a big space on the third floor. So usually I arrived by the stairs behind the more developed part of the building to arrive at the office. Later, under the aegis of writer and journalist Cesar Lengua, we were moved to the new area, in a middle space between the newsroom of Correo, Bocon and Aja, the other publications of the group with the plan to make a service pool to all of them. Juan Carlos Tafur was director of Correo and Carlos Manrique of Ojo. The Epensa building was made in a post brutalist tradition, grey and imposing in the middle of the small street at the Santa Catalina area, in the district of La Victoria. At that time part of the team were Liz Ramos Prado, Victor Boggiano and Robinson Choquetaype. Later Ivan Palomino and I were joining the team. as did for a brief time Rocio Nieto, Pedro Chuquicaja, Cesar Vicente Galagarza, all fresh designers and journalists doing their first steps like us. Luis Valle and Jose Luis Carranza, young talents from the EnSABAP were recurrent illustrators.
