For the sixth anniversary of The National, tomorrow, the newspaper at which I work, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, it was decided by the editor, Mohammed Al Otaiba, to do something different.

Something very different.

Our four standard news sections … with almost no words.

The mission:

Telling the news of the day through photos and graphics.

Some people loved it. Some did not.

Some people appreciated the “QR” (quick response) codes on each page, a fancy pants way of going from the bar-code-like images in print to the website, where the traditional stories could be found.

It was a tremendous effort, certainly, led by photographers and designers, aided significantly by the editors in each news department — business, features, sports and news.

In sports, we looked at the news events of April 16, ahead of the April 17 edition: cricket, Asian Champions League soccer, tennis …) and brainstormed ways of telling the news via images, almost exclusively.

The key meeting included the managing editor (also leader of our graphics staff), two sports editors, a designer and the photo editor assigned to sports, the five of us jammed into a tiny office.

We tweaked the plan over the next two weeks, but the basics were laid down that day, two weeks ago.

Our 16 pages skewed a bit towards feature treatment — a two-page spread on the preparations by the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team ahead of the Volvo Ocean Race, for example.

We did another two pages updating the Formula One season, with individually drawn mugshots of all 22 drivers and all the key statistics pertaining to their season and their career … and the mugshots were placed around a map of the Shanghai International Circuit, where this week’s F1 race will be held.

We did six pages on the Indian Premier League, which was playing a match in the UAE for the first time (more on that later), with Game 1 falling on the night we were going to press with the all-image newspaper.

Two pages were a graphic showing the key statistics of the eight teams and each club’s highest-paid players.

Two more went to the first match, dominated by Jacques Kallis of South Africa for the winning side, Kolkata Knight Riders.

And we turned the cover and back page of our tab section into one large horizontal photo (above) that showed the crowd and the cricket stadium here in Abu Dhabi.

(The trick was making each page able to stand on its own, which meant being very aware of where the one sheet folded, as well as coaxing the reader into recognizing that the back page … where the headline ended with an ellipse … continued right on to the cover. I think we did that fairly well.)

The point was to use as few words as possible. Short captions. Short headlines. And then lots and lots of photos and graphics. (Four of the graphic pages, including our F1 pages, can be seen, in part, at the top of this Facebook page.)

As always, deadline tormented us. That did not change. The cricket did not begin until 6:30 p.m., and the match lasted till 10, and our deadline was 10:30. The six images on our live cricket page came tumbling in right at 10, and our photo editor and graphics editor scrambled to get them on the pages.

The live football match finished even later, and we jammed the final score into the caption of a photo from the first half.

The special edition was printed on glossy, magazine-style paper, which improved the reproduction of photos. It also made for difficulties in the press room, and extra lead time, and hand-stuffing of separate sections, like sports.

For newspaper veterans, the whole exercise was something of an out-of-body experience. Our precious words (!), 99 percent stripped out … and left behind, all those images.

And it worked. Many stories can be told with a photo, or series of photos. Emotions conveyed. Maybe not a thousand words’ worth every time, but enough to make The National’s Visual Edition a collector’s item.

We could not do this every day, nor will we. But as a way to make the newspaper’s birthday memorable … mission accomplished.