Dallas Morning News

We decided to do two separate graphics in preparation for the war. One would be about troop build-ups and potential attack scenarios and the other would highlight the wonder weapons of Desert Storm versus those available now. The troops part was pretty much a big map and the weapons graphic was just a collection of fact boxes. They just weren't very exciting presented separately. One of the headlines we kicked around for the weapons graphic was 'Gulf Between the Wars' which ended up being the motivation to dump the map literally in the gulf between the wars. The timeline along the bottom ties into this theme. It's pretty much a composition gimmick but it served to contain everything in a somewhat logical framework.

The idea was posed during a Monday meeting and, knowing the graphics needed to be somewhat substantial, space was questionable until Wednesday when we learned that we would be creating a four page section just for this graphic that we would wrap the metro section with. We had done this once before with our Columbia tragedy graphic so we knew what was in store for us. It was Wednesday afternoon and the graphic would run in Sunday's bulldog.

Fortunately, a few of the weapon systems had been researched for Afghanistan so that was done. Plus, a few of those models had already been done in 3D so we trotted them out again for this one. Unfortunately, we didn't have models for the Desert Storm equipment so those had to be built as did the Abrams tank busting through the sand dunes that was going to be the dominant image tying the weapons systems together.

As I researched and modeled the equipment, Art Director Chris Morris researched and built the attack map. We slapped it all together and had a designer friend of ours, Noel Gross, watch as we assembled it to make sure it fit in our style and offer suggestions regarding the composition and other design issues.

Overall, we were very pleased, newsroom especially. We took what was two mediocre graphic ideas, combined them into an environment that provided some visual drama for the presentation. We also did promos for 1A to explain to readers where their Metro section was, we hadn't done that for the Columbia Tragedy graphic and boy did we hear about it!

Layne Smith
Multimedia Director

Chris Morris
Art Director