Those who illustrate the news
First of all, the events. Their more or less unpredictable, more or less logical or incredible succession. You need to know the faces, the places and the exact movements in order to create the storyboard of reality. A report doesn’t leave room for fiction. Only the eyes, the point of view, can make a difference: to observe, summarise, offer a clue. A journalist is nothing more than a storyteller. He sums up with words, organises a sequence of events, explains and clarifies the facts. To be a journalist means to work hard to reduce (in the most precise and faithful way), to re-establish the essence, dealing with cruel timings and with a graphic layout: those are pages with a tight deadline. We’re talking about structures indeed. In fact, someone understood how interesting it is to use illustrations in addition to words. They do what it’s called graphic journalism, a contemporary definition for an activity not too different from the prehistoric custom to describe hunting scenes on cave walls, showing them to those who didn’t experience them. Thus, the graphic journalist came into being before the journalist.
While browsing newspapers, weekly newspapers, information magazines, scrolling social networks’ pages, we decided to examine the meaning, heart and details of this profession. We’ll do it with the collaboration of the main representatives of the Italian milieu: those who illustrate the news on newspapers with the immediacy of a report, and those who transform them in satire in a few centimetres of outlines and colours; the ones who build the construction of an infographic and the ones who trace maps and symbols to make us understand the setting. In this issue, we’re going to start with Franco Portinari, an illustrator for the news pages of Corriere Della Sera, and Vincino, a cartoonist for the great national newspapers and founder – with Zac and Vauro – of Il Male.
With Chronica, a new feature of ILIT, starts the journey of discovery of how reality settles in our unconscious. One mark after the other.
Alessandro Carboni
Paolo Fossati
