Tag Archives: Multimedia

New year, new post

Multimedia, Work January 31, 2012 katdowns Leave a comment

It’s been a busy few months, but I’m gonna squeeze in a post for January! I’ve switched jobs at the Post and moved into a new role, Interactive Projects Editor, focusing on creating interactive projects that combine design and graphics with video, photography and social media. I’m really looking forward to the new challenge. In other news, I’m getting used to the new delicious and trying out this ‘stacks’ thing. I’ve got a few going, namely one on interactive maps and one for games and…

A workout at work and/or my 15 minutes of fame

Information Graphics September 19, 2011 katdowns Leave a comment

To create this graphic about exercises you can do at the office, the entire graphics department of the Post got together twice a day to do the exercises. It was a hilarious group activity — we attracted a lot of stares from passersby in the newsroom. I really enjoyed jumping around a little bit in the middle of the day to get the blood pumping. The graphic was a fun collaboration between Laura Stanton, who illustrated many of the department members, Sohail Al-Jamea, who created…

Hot multimedia at Global Warning

Projects, Teaching May 27, 2011 katdowns Leave a comment

A full five months after wrapping the Global Warning project, I think it’s time to do a blog post about it! I spent last fall working with a team of students on a National Security Reporting project at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. I was an adjunct professor, teaching the students multimedia design and light programming, and serving as the design lead for the project, which was led by Ellen Shearer and Josh Meyer. After spending a couple of months in the discovery and…

Mapping the news: Libya and Japan

Information Graphics, Maps, Multimedia March 21, 2011 katdowns Leave a comment

The past several weeks have been full of foreign news, and we have been producing lots of graphics to explain what’s happening. I have worked on these two graphics, one about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, and one that explains what is going on in Libya. For a full explanation of the process of creating the Japan graphic, visit the new Innovations blog at the WP (excerpted below): Friday morning, as news of the earthquake in Japan spread, we started pulling together an…

The Cost of War

Multimedia October 7, 2010 katdowns Leave a comment

This past Sunday “Coming home a different person” launched, a project I worked on with Whitney Shefte and Alberto Cuadra, alongside reporter Chris Davenport. It features an overview video that covers the increases in traumatic brain injury cases and what doctors are doing to treat it, as well as five case studies of three soldiers and two Marines, and a graphic that explains the science of brain injury. I initially heard about the story Chris Davenport was working on and thought, wow, this is an…

Alternative story formats: Investigation into Alaska native corporations

Multimedia October 4, 2010 katdowns Leave a comment

This investigation, which launched September 30, focused on Alaska Native Corporations and their explosive growth during the last decade. I combined photos, graphics and video in a multimedia slideshow. The intention was to build a relationship between the corporations and the shareholders they represent. Alaska natives are some of the nation’s poorest people, and some of the corporations that were supposed to be helping them make their way have instead been funneling money back to contractors in Washington.

D.C.’s rock scene: 9:30 club turns 30

Multimedia April 16, 2010 katdowns Leave a comment

I spent the last few days working on this piece about the 30th anniversary of the opening of the 9:30 club, one of the best venues in D.C. (and a lot of people would say the whole country). Alex Garcia shot some great concert video and interviewed some key people, and Josh du Lac wrote the magazine story. I pulled it all together in this multimedia slideshow, which has several different text layouts and video in varying sizes. The content of this is the coolest…

Videos from India Trip

Multimedia February 28, 2010 katdowns Leave a comment

A full year after Whitney and my trip to India, we finally finished up the piece we were working on for it: India in Motion, which was published on The Washington Post’s website. Whitney did over 20 short videos reflecting the sights and sounds of the country. There are videos from almost all the places we visited, chief among them Mumbai, Udaipur and Rishikesh. I designed the piece and built the player, which had some similarities to Scene In in that it was a series…

The Battle of Wanat

Multimedia, Work October 5, 2009 katdowns Leave a comment

Yesterday we launched a multimedia narrative on the Battle of Wanat, one of the deadliest battles that have taken place in Afghanistan since the war began. I designed and developed this timeline in collaboration with Greg Jaffe, Liz Heron, Ben de la Cruz, Laris Karklis and several others. It combines video, audio, maps, documents and photography to tell the story of what took place on July 13, 2008, when Taliban fighters launched a major assault on a small U.S. Army outpost in Afghanistan, killing nine…

New Series: Fatal Flights

Information Graphics August 24, 2009 katdowns Leave a comment

Last Friday The Washington Post published an investigative series, “Fatal Flights,” on medical helicopters in the U.S. I worked on three graphics for the piece: two for the first day and one that ran Sunday. The first piece, Fatal Crashes Since 1980, combined a timeline, trend data and crash and victim information for all fatal crashes since 1980. We also put together this timeline of the 2008 Maryland crash that uses audio and maps to piece together what happened during the search for Trooper 2.I…

Five Years of Banter / What I’ve Been Working On

Design and infographics, Work May 21, 2009 katdowns Leave a comment

I was just poking around my old blog posts and realized that this blog is about to turn five years old on June 7. In honor of that milestone, I plan to completely redesign the blog and add some features. I’m also going to be posting some of my more recent work in the next few days/weeks. I realize my last post was more than a year and a half ago, and a lot has happened in the interim. About a year ago, I started…

Work from baltimoresun.com

Design and infographics, Work November 12, 2007 katdowns Leave a comment

SPEEDING TICKETS BY JURISDICTION 2006This map shows the distribution of speeding tickets in Maryland by range of miles-per-hour over the limit. The pattern varies county-by-county. BRAC SECTION FRONTIn preparation for the influx of military workers coming to Maryland during the upcoming base realignment, we wanted to prepare a page that explained the process, informed readers of current developments and provided resources for those moving to the area. I designed the BRAC page and the flash graphic in the center of the page, which includes a…

Darfur & FFI

Multimedia November 28, 2006 katdowns Leave a comment

Two fun items on the agenda: Darfur: Who Will Survive Now? and FFI The Holocaust Memorial Museum had a special display of photographs on the outside of their building last week to raise awareness about the situation in Darfur. They projected enormous photographs onto the three walls on the outside of the building, which were accompanied by music. The images, which were taken by several photojournalists, were hauntingly beautiful. The multimedia presentation was incredibly effective. If you check out the links above, you can see…

Telling Stories - Interactive Edition

Multimedia, Photography and multimedia November 16, 2006 katdowns 1 Comment

Go to this feature and watch the Congo story. The photographs are wonderful. Props to Gabe. It’s interesting to think about the different ways that audio is integrated with photographs to make slideshows. Sometimes the effect is great (see above), and other times it seems like someone just said, “Let’s make a slideshow!” When there are no ambient sounds or subject voices, figuring out the best way to tell an audio story can be tough. Should the photographer talk about her/his images? Should the reporter…

Running With Scissors

Multimedia October 13, 2006 katdowns 1 Comment

Really cool multimedia site built for the upcoming film Running with Scissors. I love the design, interactivity, and use of text, video, and photos. It’s engaging and easy to use, and it gives the user a lot of information. The scrapbook idea has been done before, but here it is done very, very well- and the interactivity adds an extra element to it that makes you feel like the story is alive, and fun. It’s kooky, like the story. I was interested in this movie…