New Society for News Design program makes essential professional training in telling visual stories accessible to college students worldwide
More than 70 students from American and international universities joined the Society for News Design’s inaugural digital narrative and visual storytelling apprenticeship, the SND Challenge, in the first half of 2026.
Those students — from colleges in the United States, Mexico and Argentina — were paired with leaders in design, visual storytelling, information graphics, data analysis and data visualization from organizations around the globe, including Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Mundo Deportivo in Spain and El Heraldo in Colombia.
Through guidance from their SND mentors, students learned to apply professional-level rigor and visual storytelling techniques to their own pitched projects.
The program
The Challenge was conceived by SND Board Members Marco Hernandez, a graphics editor at the New York Times, and Alberto Lucas López, Senior Artist for New Narratives at National Geographic. Their premise: No matter what corner of the world they are in, a group of students should be able to take on the challenge of creating a digital narrative with the support of a professional.
“Decades ago, as a student in Costa Rica, connecting with industry leaders was nearly impossible,” Hernandez said. “Later in my career, SND became a vital resource for my professional growth. Seeing the work of the world’s best was inspiring; however, from my home country, it took a significant effort to go a step further and actually speak with them.
“My hope for this program is that worldwide students committed to developing their skills and future can gain access earlier to global leaders to learn from them,” he continued. “The more we share, the better our future becomes. I think that applies equally to enthusiastic students and to established professionals who are giving back a little of the good they have received during their careers.”
Marco Hernandez, SND Board Member and Graphics Editor, with participants of the SND Challenge at Centro – Diseño in Mexico City. 
A student presenting her project at Centro – Diseño in Mexico City. 
Marco Hernandez, SND Board Member and Graphics Editor, with participants of the SND Challenge at Centro – Diseño in Mexico City.
The process
Students began the Challenge by forming teams at their schools and securing an instructor to act as their day-to-day advisor. They then pitched a story with visual potential to SND. Upon being successfully accepted into the program, the teams were matched with an exclusive mentor based on fit in terms of the project’s subject matter and storytelling needs, and the team’s time zone and preferred language.
Over four months, about 80 students and advisors across 17 teams worked on their digital narratives and received feedback from their SND mentor during scheduled check-ins. After completing their projects, they published on GitHub Pages, an online platform for hosting and sharing web projects, using a template devised by SND.
SND awarded teams that successfully completed their projects a complimentary SND membership and a certificate acknowledging their achievement.
The participants and their projects
Teams from Centro – Diseño, Cine y Televisión in Mexico, CalPoly – San Luis Obispo in California, Ohio University and Universidad Argentina de la Empresa approached the Challenge from unique viewpoints while exploring a broad array of subjects.
“Entre Letras” (“Between the Lyrics“) — Centro
At Centro, José Luis Zamudio Rivera and Cynthia Isabel Herrera Gómez visualized shifting narrative themes and cultural values in Mexican music in their project, “Entre Letras” (“Between the Lyrics”). For their piece, the pair analyzed 3,000 songs that were popular in Mexico from 2018 to 2025.
“Missing people are not in the President’s morning press conferences” — Centro
Another Centro team focused on their nation’s missing persons crisis. In “Missing people are not in the President’s morning press conferences,” Nallely Velázquez, Omar Galdamez, and Mariana Centeno visualized the stark contrast between the crisis and how often it is mentioned in Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s daily media briefing.
“30 Years Later” — CalPoly
Leila Touati, Archana Pisupati, Carly Heltzel, Grace Gillio and Anika Loganathan of CalPoly were already deep into reporting on how feelings of isolation and discrimination among students of color at their school has remained remarkably unchanged over the last 30 years when they applied to join the Challenge. Their project integrated ambitious data visualizations with their 5,000-word story.
Other teams, projects
At Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Melina Cosco, Florencia Díaz, Delfina Rufrano and Felipe Torrecilla produced a piece on the rise of online gambling among adolescents. Their project features testimonies about how sports betting can evolve from a form of entertainment into a compulsive pursuit of financial reward by risking money. The piece aims to raise awareness about the issue and highlights the importance of seeking professional support when addicted to gambling.
At Ohio University, Kayla Payne, Ashim F. Talukdar, Victor Morgan designed a visual explainer of the Hartman Mound in the Wolfe Plains Group, a collection of earthworks created by the Adena, an Indigenous people with origins in Ohio dating back 2,800 years. The Hartman Mound is one of the largest and best-preserved of the remaining Wolfe Plain earthworks.
Other student groups tackled topics as diverse as the accessibility of the Mexico City Metro, the expansion of AI, football (soccer), global armed conflicts and marine snail shells.
The mentors
Organizing the inaugural Challenge was a daunting task, particularly without a preexisting group of professionals from whom Hernandez and Lucas López could draw to serve as mentors. They recruited from their networks, including a large contingent from the New York Times.
The mentors in the first cohort include Manuel Canales (formerly of the Washington Post and National Geographic); Pedro Jimenez (RTVE – Spain TV); Ferran Morales (Mundo Deportivo in Spain); Mariano Zafra (Reuters); Raúl Rodríguez (El Comercio Perú); Fabián Cárdenas (El Heraldo in Colombia); Manuel Cabrera (Morse Films in Ecuador); Tandis Shoushtary (Adobe); and Alyssa Fowers (formerly the Washington Post).
From the New York Times are Lazaro Gamio, Blacki Migliozzi, Lily Boyce, Mira Rojanasakul, Elena Shao, Anjali Singhvi, Larry Buchanan and Bea Malsky.
The future
Applications for the SND Challenge’s next cohort — which is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027 — are now open.
SND hopes to expand the Challenge by attracting more participants from within the United States and from countries outside of the Americas, including non-English and non-Spanish speakers. SND also plans to broaden its roster of mentors so that it draws from a wider range of organizations, disciplines and nationalities.
This growth plan coincides with SND’s reinvigoration of its global outreach.
In 2026, SND held its first ever workshop in Southeast Asia during SND47, the 47th edition of the society’s Creative Competition.
The event in April was held for the first time in two locations: Berkeley, Calif. and Singapore. In addition to three days of selecting and awarding the world’s best visual storytelling, SND organized a day of professional workshops in both cities and covered topics that spanned artificial intelligence, information graphics and forging a creative path out of adversity.
“We’re living in an era saturated with visuals that dominate how we consume information, be that in a news report, in a financial statement or in a TikTok reel,” said Jon Wile, SND president and American City Business Journals vice president of design. “Design plays an important part in our ability to explain the world to each other by bringing clarity to complexity.”
“SND is dedicated to helping students, young professionals and seasoned workers worldwide develop the skills to tell stronger visual stories — whether they work in journalism or any other field,” he added. “The SND Challenge and our events overseas are examples of what this organization is doing to fulfill our commitment to making essential training accessible to all.”
For more examples from this year’s SND Challenge, keep up with us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
For more information or to apply for the SND Challenge, please see our program page.
