Emirates Business nets global graphics award

Emirates Business, the only English daily business newspaper in the region, has won an international contest for newspaper design.

The business daily was recognised for “Graphics in Non-Breaking News Stories” at the 29th Annual Creative Design Contest, organised by the media design group Society for News Design, headquartered in Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States.

The winners were crowned by votes from nearly 400 daily and weekly newspapers around the world. The publication that bagged the majority of the awards in all 19 categories was the Los Angeles Times – winning 109 awards.

A total of 193 newspapers from 33 countries were awarded for their design.

Publications from countries such as Brazil, the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Turkey were awarded. 

Luis Chumpitaz, Infographic Director at the Arab Media Group and designer at Emirates Business said: “It is a great honour for us to receive this award and for Emirates Business to be recognised in this way.

“We are looking forward to bringing our readers more informative and interesting graphics in the months and years to come.”

Chumpitaz said graphics and photography are “structural parts of today’s newspapers” and should count as “equally communicative as the text itself”.

“Our editorial team is very optimistic about the role of design at the newspaper. They consider the design a first line element in regards to contact with the readers and therefore put in efforts on that front,” he said.

At business publications such as Emirates Business, which sometimes feature technical information that might be tough for some readers to grasp, visual aids such as infographics are necessary, added Chumpitaz.

He is convinced that good newspaper design increases readership. “Nowadays readers have a strong visual orientation that needs to be taken seriously,” he said.

While some newspapers published in the Arab region emerged as winners in the contest, no Arabic-language publication won an award.

Chumpitaz, however, said the future for newspaper design in the Arab world is a very bright, though yet unexplored. The way the Arabic language is written is very beautiful, but not sufficient attention is paid to design of Arabic newspapers.

“Interest in the aesthetic value of the Arabic language is increasing very quickly around the world.

“We can arrive at great results if we manage to find teams that can assimilate international design know-how with Arabic culture and its particular sense of graphics,” said Chumpitaz.