ST feted for visual storytelling at global design contest

One of The Straits Times' works that won an award at the Society for News Design's 2020 Best of Digital Design competition was an interactive graphic titled From 1845 To 2020: Singapore And The World Through ST Headlines, which saw the paper's intera
One of The Straits Times' works that won an award at the Society for News Design's 2020 Best of Digital Design competition was an interactive graphic titled From 1845 To 2020: Singapore And The World Through ST Headlines, which saw the paper's interactive graphics team comb through more than 47,000 headlines. ST PHOTO: ST DIGITAL

From a million Covid-19 deaths to a 200km road trip around Singapore, The Straits Times' strong body of work in visual storytelling across a range of topics was recognised at a global design contest.

ST won an award of excellence for its portfolio in infographics at the 2020 Best of Digital Design competition. It also clinched four other awards of excellence for its infographics on local issues, politics, and travel and lifestyle, as well as an individual award for UI/UX designer Alyssa Karla Mungcal.

This year's results were announced over the weekend by the Society for News Design, which organises the annual event. It drew over 1,700 entries from 29 countries, and winners included The New York Times, The Washington Post and Reuters.

In a year that saw a global pandemic, a Singapore general election and the publication's 175th anniversary, ST's portfolio showcased its versatility and creativity in various digital formats while retaining its Singapore and Asia focus.

When the world crossed the grim milestone of a million Covid-19 deaths last September, ST visualised the virus' devastating spread across the world through an interactive streamgraph. The project captured the many twists and turns of the pandemic, including how some countries in Asia saw a resurgence in infections.

Other award-winning works by ST included an interactive graphic that shed light on the biggest stories of the past 175 years through an analysis of ST's front-page headlines, from its first edition on July 15, 1845, until last year.

The project, titled From 1845 To 2020: Singapore And The World Through ST Headlines, saw the ST interactive graphics team comb through more than 47,000 headlines. An algorithm that gives weight to how important subjects were in their respective years was used in the analysis. Topics that dominated the headlines included epidemics and foreign affairs.

Launched to mark ST's 175th anniversary last year, the graphic allowed readers to select a date and see what the page one news for that day was.

ST interactive graphics editor Rodolfo Pazos said the team spent the past year focusing on its efforts to tell big data-driven stories simply and effectively, but with compassion. "It is encouraging to see our team's work placed as high as some of the best news design teams in the world," he said.

With the pandemic putting the brakes on overseas travel, a popular project that took readers on a 200km drive around Singapore also got the nod from judges. Readers could download the route, which included recommendations on unusual sights along the way.

ST editor Warren Fernandez said: "It was a challenging year for everyone last year, with so many big news stories breaking out, from the pandemic to the elections. Our promise to our readers was to cover these as best as we could across all our platforms."

Mr Fernandez, who is also the editor-in-chief of Singapore Press Holdings' English/Malay/ Tamil Media Group, added: "We also made our multimedia efforts, with new and more visual forms of engaging audiences, a key focus of our 2020 product revamp, which we did to mark ST's 175th anniversary.

"So, I think these awards are recognition of those efforts by our peers and other professional journalists."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 02, 2021, with the headline ST feted for visual storytelling at global design contest. Subscribe