This was a center-spread page I designed for a USA Today tabloid published in tandem with the release of “The Vietnam War,” the PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.
Florentine Films, Burns’ production company, supplied the text and map. I collected the photos and did the page. The backdrop is from a photo of names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
This piece on Charles Lindbergh’s New York-to-Paris flight in 1927 is one of my favorite projects. I researched and wrote this, collected most of the artwork, and designed both the print page and the online presentation.
In history-related articles like these, I start with a clear narration and include background that gives readers a good idea of what was happening around the event. Lindbergh was competing for the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 cash award (equal to about $350,000 today) designed to spur advancements in aviation.
After establishing a point-to-point description, I add the details. With Lindbergh, they were richly fascinating:
Lindbergh waited until 1954, when he wrote his second book about the flight, before revealing that ghosts, spirits of some sort, appeared in the Spirit of St. Louis during the 22nd hour.
That led me to research “The Third Man Factor,” in which people in extreme physical circumstances sometimes hallucinate guardian angels, or other spirits who comfort and guide them. The phenomenon is named after a poem by T. S. Eliot, who based his piece on the Antarctic survival story of Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Colleagues Janet Loehrke did the map and Frank Pompa did the Spirit of St. Louis illustration. Both print and online versions received high praise. A link to the online piece is here.
This simple graphic compares the amount of horsepower offered by the new Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and its predecessors, the iconic muscle cars of American automotive legends. I did this as a Social card, a 2,000-pixel-square graphic that’s posted on social media to promote online stories. The dramatic photo of the Demon inspired both my choice of a black background and the overall idea for the graphic.
The history of World War I — how it started and how the U.S. was drawn into it — was splashed across this double-page inside a USA Today special publication. I did all the research, found the artwork, wrote and organized the text, and designed the page. I took care to highlight American involvement in the war with special indicators in the timeline.
Copy editor Paul Soucy, a history buff himself, made valuable recommendations that improved the piece.
This was a fun graphic for a USA Today tabloid publication. I researched the history of U.S. exploration of the red planet and talked to a few NASA engineers about the Orion spacecraft, the next American vehicle to travel into space.
NASA provided the images but the words and design are mine. My colleague Ramon Padilla suggested using the orbit image as an over-arcing element, which helped tie the page together.
I researched and wrote a detailed timeline of the events leading to the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor for USA Today online and for a special insert in Gannett papers across the country.
As I wrote in the introduction, many Americans believe the attack was totally unexpected. However, even a casual student of history knows of the friction between the U.S. and Japan in the years before World War II. I sought to assemble the historical facts into a coherent narrative that describes the lead-up to war.
I originally envisioned a standard timeline, but I uncovered interesting items previously unknown to me, from the awful story of the USS West Virginia and the men trapped below decks, to the curious coincidence of the doomed USS Arizona in a 1934 James Cagney film titled “Here Comes the Navy.” These are facets of Pearl Harbor that are unknown to most.
This took a great deal of research. At last count I had literally 17 books stacked on my desk, from Craig Nelson’s “Pearl Harbor, From Infamy to Greatness,” to a memoir written by Joseph Grew, the U.S. ambassador to Japan. I also pestered the National Archives and the U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command for documents on 1932 and 1938 Navy war games that simulated the Japanese attack years before the actual event.
The page, known as a longform presentation, was built by USAT colleague Mitchell Thorson, but the design, research and words are mine.
A link to the story is here.
I put together a full-page graphic for USA Today looking back at the Cultural Revolution in China. Numbers on atrocities committed are disputed; I ended up expanding my usual research to include two books written by historians to provide a better picture of what happened. Frank Pompa did the map. I like my choice of a Mao poster as dominant art.
I assembled a full-page graphic for USA Today showing the backlash against North Carolina and Mississippi laws discriminating against people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. It was helpful to include reactions of corporations, sports teams and entertainment figures. My colleague Linda Dono provided critical research assistance.
I researched and designed a full-page graphic for USA Today on the human toll of Syria’s five-year war. I used common references — the number of refugees equaling the population of South Carolina, for instance — to show the magnitude of the tragedy.
I reworked a NASA graphic depicting the Hubble Space Telescope for a USA Today/National Geographic Channel tab on the 25th anniversary of the telescope’s deployment.
The updated version.
The original version has great artwork but the text is too jargon-heavy to the average reader. I cut it down and added sections explaining how the telescope works and how it was fixed by spacewalking astronauts on five missions.
A neutral background makes the text easier to read. I added the six flights (along with mission patches) that put the telescope in orbit and repaired it.
At the bottom, I put in a scale depicting celestial objects photographed by the Hubble and their location from Earth. It was impossible to keep every object on the same scale since the distances are too great.
I was fortunate to incorporate Frank Pompa’s existing graphic showing how starlight enters the telescope — it helped the reader quickly understand how that part of the telescope works. I kept the same color scheme when drawing the telescope’s internal mirrors and and showing how they were fixed.
The original version.
George Petras: Graphics and Story Portfolio 