Charles Apple

Let’s take a moment out of our Saturday to offer the happiest of VizEds birthday wishes to the superbly talented Javier Zarracina, graphics director of The Boston Globe.

Javier has been in Boston for nearly two years. Previously, he spent two years as the graphics director of the regional newspapers division of Group Vocento in Spain. He was also the senior graphics consultor for the Innovation Consulting group.

A 1987 graduate of the Universidad del Pais Vasco in Bilbao, Spain, Javier started as an artist for El Correro in Bilbao in 1990 and worked his way up to graphics editor and then graphics director in 1997. He became deputy graphics director of The San Jose Mercury News in 2004. Many of you will remember him as half of the ass-kicking winning team in the infamous Graphics Iron Chef competition at SND/San Jose in 2004.

In addition to being a wonderful artist and visual communicator, Javier is a warm, friendly guy and a fabulous teacher. He’s taught at the Pamplona University, consulted for clients like La Vanguardia and Le Monde and freelanced for National Geographic Traveler.

Last year, when I was teaching in Manila, I was amazed at how often Javier and his work was referenced. At one point, Peter Ong presented an entire Zarracina slideshow — a really cool one on the relationship between infographics and comic books — that Javier had given sometime earlier and then graciously allowed Peter to replay.

A few samples of work by Javier and his staff:

See many more on Javier’s personal web site.

Javier shares a birthday with musicians John Hahn (of Linkin Park), Mark Hoppus (of Blink-182) and Mike Love (the Beach Boys), actors Eva Longoria, Judd Hirsch and MacDonald Carey, male supermodel Fabio and the man on the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson.

Plus, today is Buzzard’s Day. Seriously.

Best wishes, Javier, for a great birthday!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am and is filed under Graphics, Happy birthday, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.