For the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, we published an oral history of the week after his death. Revisiting this week was familiar — immediately after Floyd’s death in 2020, I built a visual timeline that was part of our staff’s Pulitzer Prize win.

I believe the best design is always informed by the content, first and foremost. As such, this project is somber, utilizing large-scale photography breaks and balanced typography to allow the story to shine. I knew I wanted to use some of the visual identity from my previous piece, such as a black background and navigation by day. The oral history was a chance to make it stronger, though, and update it with our new brand typography.

I wanted the video to feel integral to the oral history. If readers didn’t enable audio, however, I wanted them to still get the information. I made sure captioning was available and styled the video credits and transcript to be similar to the rest of the oral history, emphasizing its continued importance in the narrative, instead of treating it like an interruption or sidebar to the main text. We edited thoroughly, ensuring the videos and the narrative text didn’t repeat each other.