Innovative Individuals

Innovative Individuals: Juan Carlos Sánchez

• español

Juan Carlos Sánchez was the mastermind behind El Mundo’s graphic coverage of the Haiti earthquake that I highlighted earlier in the week, but his name has also been on countless other award-winning infographics. You might have seen his project, “Valencia Street Circuit,” which was awarded a bronze at the 2008 International Infographic Malofiej awards. We are honored to choose Juan for this week’s title as “Innovative Individual” for his excellent infographic work over the years.

Q) How do you drive innovation in your work?

A) I think that innovation is a term that is associated with the evolution of a person, according to the level of knowledge that he or she has of the medium and of the tools he or she works with.

You evolve through effort, consistency, continued education, and testing and mixing up the different software. You enhance performance through the knowledge that we obtain from its capacities, possibilities and results.

In a media organization such as an online newspaper, where you are subject and conditioned to today’s information and production time, it is pretty complicated to create that space and time for research. Therefore, in order to favor development and the evolution of your work it is more about a personal inquietude and satisfaction than anything else.

When you look for information, you organize it, structure it, design it, develop and execute it, all the while using the programs that are necessary according to the information and the approach. That is why having knowledge of 3D programs, vectors, image editing, post production, audio, design, flash, programing, and video is necessary for the kind of job we do.

I am lucky to be able to inform; I like journalism. I particularly like thinking how to visualize the information, how to transform the complex into simple and understandable, determine which visual narrative is more appropriate, and, over all, to know how to think in web terms to communicate better, while taking advantage of all the resources that the media makes available for us.

Q) What piece in your portfolio are you most proud of and why?

A) I could put many more projects than I will, but perhaps due to the size of the project or because what is important at that moment, these deserve to be highlighted:

Ampliación Museo del Prado “El Cubo”

The Prado Museum (Madrid) was inaugurating its expansion and we started working for what was going to be the expansion project of one of the most important museums in the world because of the incalculable value of its gallery.

We had the photography equipment from the newspaper and a 360º panoramic camera that we bought specially for this project. An audio and video colleague was in charge of all interviews with the museum director with explanations of the new rooms and which expositions we would find there. After many trials, we finally visited the project’s architect, Rafael Moneo, who explained the distribution of the new rooms and the project’s blue prints. We had to organize up to four visits to the gallery, author information and the correspondent paintings, individuals photos, room panoramics, voice recordings, doubts about the blue prints. FInally, and after all the effort, interviews, photographies, audio, visits, information organization and many hours… the project saw the light.

America’s Cup (La tripulación)

Spain is a country of nautical tradition, even though it is a minority sport. It was the celebration of the 32nd edition of the America’s Cup and for the first time in history it was going to be celebrated in Valencia (Spain), so the challenge was how to explain to the people a sport which norms are unknown, like the boat characteristics, specifics about the race, how the points are given, etc.

We started working and thanks to a relative who practices sailing, we collected blue prints, photos, the event organization and nautical books, and we set up to teach our users what the competition was about.

I divided the multimedia special in three projects, but I had a pretty clear idea that the subject of the crew, who they were, their spot on the boat and their functions inside the boat where sufficient enough to decide to structure the graphic in such a way that the user could interact with it, and through him, become familiar with the competition.

Q) Please provide a brief educational and professional history.

A) I studied advertisement in Madrid and after working in several agencies and doing a Graphic Design master, I had the big fortune to form part of the professional team that was part of the infographics section, which brought to life a new project of a communication media, the Diario de Sevilla. I spent two years there.

I have been part of the interactive graphics department of elmundo.es for nine years and I have participated as a professor in the intensive multimedia infographics courses that the newspaper has organized.

I have been awarded for individual and team projects in SND.ies and the International Infographic Malofiej awards.

Q) Where do you believe multimedia fits into today’s society and how will that role change over time?

A) Well treated and used you can consider that it has a place even in a didactic paper. It teaches, informs, communicates … and in the future with the technological advances we will discover that its importance will become even bigger, because part of the support that will be used even in the most daily things will go through the multimedia development. The iPad and the launch if the next google digital tablet are a clear example of what is coming.

Q) What is one thing on your “To-Do” list?

A) To have the opportunity to spend a season in another communication media’s news desk, where I would be able to share knowledge, understand and work with different ways of visualizing the information and planning the projects.

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Want to nominate a deserving colleague, friend or inspirational figure to be highlighted in this series? Confidential nominations can be emailed to tracynboyer@gmail.com on an ongoing basis. Self nominations are also welcome. A person will be featured every Friday, so look for the next “innovative individual” Friday, February 12th!

Other posts that might interest you:

• Innovative Individuals: Juan Thomassie
• Innovative Individuals: Eric Maierson

© 4 February 2010 Innovative Interactivity (II).