"Trumping Democracy: An American Coup" CNN Documentary

When we kicked off this project, the producer described the documentary as presenting a series of facts and evidence which would culminate in proof that Donald Trump and his associates actually attempted a coup of the US government. She described an idea for a hero animation which used graphic representations of the facts to literally build the word "coup".

So our design team began with concepts for this animation, intending to build out the rest of the look from there. My design was chosen, and we began to brainstorm how to show these facts as blocks that could be used throughout the documentary and collect in this final animation.

I designed and developed an After Effects template which gave our team of animators a sandbox in which to create these blocks. They could choose a corner of the screen in which the block would land, based on guides from the editors, and then they could add the text for each fact and a cropped portion of one letter of the word "coup" as a unifying design element. In total, there were 43 of these blocks created by the team, spread over the eight acts of the special.

I also designed and created the "coup" animation and the show open and bump-in and -outs in the same style, which also informed the design of the other internal graphics and looping backgrounds.