Futures Lab update #92: Ideas for visualizing the news

This week we look at some new ways illustrations, comics, and 3-D technologies are being applied to complex journalistic storytelling.

PART 1: 3-D graphic immersion

Reynolds Fellow Dan Archer has been exploring how comics, 3-D and interactive technology combined could offer new types of news-related experiences. The end result enables audience members to navigate their own path toward a deeper understanding of events.

Reporting by Katy Mersmann.

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Additional examples of graphic/comic journalism:

• Dan Goldman is a comic book designer who worked with the Tribeca Film Institute and Ram Devineni and Lina Srivastava to create the interactive comic book “Priya’s Shakti,” which takes on gender-based violence in India.
• Josh Neufeld and Michael Keller created for Al Jazeera America the online comic book “Terms of Service” to explain the world of big data.
• The interactive graphic novel “Highly Potent: The History of Heroin” (published as an iPad app and also viewable as a video) uses illustration and interactivity to tell the story of how the drug has evolved since 3400 B.C. The project includes more than 120 hand-drawn illustrations created by a team at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism’s New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab to accompany a half-hour documentary film about heroin in Arizona.

PART 2: Illustrated documentaries

Carrie Ching has created award-winning work such as “In Jennifer’s Room” that weaves art and audio into compelling multimedia narratives, such as her latest project “Correspondent Confidential.” We find out how these pieces come together.

Reporting by Katy Mersmann, Rachel Wise and Reuben Stern.

[To skip directly to this segment in YouTube, click here.]

Additional examples of illustrated documentaries:

• The “Modern Love” series from The New York Times offers several good examples of the illustrated documentary style being used to convey nonfiction stories.
• A big influence on Carrie Ching’s work was the feature-length film “Waltz with Bashir,” which combined extensive interviews with illustrations to recreate the events being discussed.

Reuben Stern  
 
Director of NYC Partnerships

Reuben Stern is RJI’s director of New York City partnerships and is the director of the Missouri School of Journalism’s New York program.

Rachel Wise  
 
Video Editor

As video editor at RJI’s Futures Lab, Rachel Wise co-produces and edits the weekly Futures Lab video updates, and produces other video projects at RJI.