The 6th of August 2020 marked 75 years since the first atomic weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. The Telegraph’s correspondent Jonathan Holmes gathered eye-witness accounts of survivors who were on the ground and aim to tell the story from their perspective.
I was tasked to art direct this project and to find the best visual solutions for this long-read article on a sensitive topic. A desicion was made to avoid using traditional japanese art references like Ukiyo-e prints judged too literal. Instead we choose to reuse their shapes vocabulary and to integrate them in a collage with Hiroshima’s archive pictures. The blue, white, red and black neon blocs of colours are used to modernise the collage and evoke the different chapters of the long-read and stages of the event ; the blue sky, the light of the blast, the fire and the ashes. The gradients used in the illustrations are integrated in archive pictures to represent the impact of the explosion on Hiroshima and the radiations on its survivors. I directed Ruby on the illustrations she produced for the piece.
Link to article
Graphics : Fraser Lyness, Liz Gould
Web development : David Stevenson, Oliver Edgington, Florin Bratescu
Product design : Abby Rose, Ed Goldman
Production : Richard Moynihan, Thom Gibbs