The four-part series from the Washington Business Journal examines the region's sharp economic divide and lack of equity available to those in communities populated by people of color. The issues are divided into parts – the housing gap (part 1), access to capital and investments (part 2), nutrition and health care (part 3), and access to broadband and education (part 4). Each story sheds light on the local businesses and individuals who are working to enact change.
I met with our team of editors and reporters about two weeks in advance to outline each stories and element of each part. We first discussed the stories, the art and data, and the cover concept. Next, we planned our digital strategy for the web articles and social posts. Part one required more than one meeting, since it was our introduction into the series.
Each part consisted of an introductory map to visualize the divide, data for each story, and photos of the individuals and businesses quoted. I spent most of the time looking through spreadsheets that the reporters researched and compiled for their respective stories. It took an average of two days to read through the spreadsheets and make initial visualizations through maps (using Mapcreator) and charts.
Part one production included the visual branding strategy for the entire series. I went through several iterations of the series logo and page one concept, which would become the leading image for the web and social platforms. I also set up a base map to replicate and use in future weeks.
Once the structure of the print version was put together, I mocked up the elements for web and social. The strategy involved creating hero images for each story, responsive web versions of the infographics (using Infogram), and refers that linked to each story in the series. I used our individual hero images for the refer and social teases.
My portion of our social strategy was focused on Instagram, since the Journal’s content management system automatically formats the hero images for other platforms. I reworked our refer images for a gallery post in our Instagram feed.
Part one of the series took about two weeks to complete, from the visual planning to the Instragram post. I saved the style templates for each platform in order to streamline the design for every part of the series. Doing so allowed us to spend more time visualizing data and finalizing concepts, resulting in about one week of production work for parts two through four.
