Saturday, June 9, 2007

Detroit Free Press: VA Tech shootings

published April 29, 2007

this was my third pitch for this four-part editorial. originally, I wanted to do a 'connect-the-dots' kind of thing, when it seemed the story would be focused on how the different supporting players (the parents, police, classmates, etc), might have seen this disaster coming. that sketch (which i unfortunately recycled) showed bullet holes piercing the paper, connecting to form the image of a student with a gun (which I recycled in a secondary illustration, shown below). The second pitch was a maze metaphor: how would a student make his way past so many obstacles set up to prevent such a massacre? in that image, the killer would have knocked the walls down and barreled straight into the center, which would have been an open classroom with a few desks and chairs strewn around. in the end, the hurdles seemed like the clearest image, with the closest visual tie to a student, via the track suit. it's not the image i liked the best, but i think it was the most direct, and it implies a velocity/inevitability that i like. i'm happy with the way it turned out.

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