Designed journalism, visual journalism, video-multimedia journalism

Just picked up two amazing books for a bargain price of 20 UKP.

One's on Bauhaus design and the other from an amazing design outfit called the Attic Seeing is Believing and this book is a wealth of inspiration - from anything such as web design, typography, motion graphics and trippy things.



The process of design meets journalism has crystalised three main core areas for me in this new new thing.

Videohyperlinking - linking one video to another within the frame. In other words by clicking the linear video you'll jump to another segment then come back to the mother time line. I have produced an example, from a conference in San Antonio - you'll need a fast connection.

Integrated Multimedia Videojournalism - the aesthetic of videojournalism (Gonzo) with graphic and motion design yielding integrated multimedia packages. The Butterfly Vlog and the Family would be examples. The latter points to interactive docs and a strong film aesthetic with promos etc.

The Outernet - The point where the net is no longer tethered to desks and laptops, but three D space designs such as the cube here - a playable huge rubick's cube which shows a story on segments of each side, controllable like the interface in Minority Report. Being immersed in ones own site, interacting live with the data ( not quite there yet) are other examples. You'll see an example of an aspect of the Outernet controlled by hand movements on Apple's site; they asked for the pic for an article.

The skill set is what we've all come to know: Video, FCP, Flash, Director, Action Scripting, CSS, After Effects, Key framing, Illustration, Compression technology, Sound Pro, Lighting, typography - and thus borrows from the web, TV-docs production, radio production, graphic design, and videojournalism.

One of the more prevalent questions I get asked concerns compressing film.
Take this promo here for instance which measures unusually 800 px by 450 px on the screen reduced from over a gig to 15mb. The key is to compress your film above its minimum threshold; the point where it begins to disinetegrate and then recompress at Flashes higher state.

Equally important I'd add it's not what I think I know already, but employing a different approach, that which I don't know but am willing to give a go. Artistry means never pursuing the same idea and execution twice.

This inspires the pants of me - from the ronin, the titles to OFFF in New York - produced off a small cam and distilled through After Effects.


Yes it's not journalism, but if you wanna know about the water, don't ask a fish!