The Narwhal News Society is a non-profit organization that publishes an online magazine about environmental issues in Canada.
I created art and design for reportage on a First Nation majoowned transmission line in Ontario, the closure of the BC Tree Fruit Co-op, the bison migration on the Buffalo Road and on Ontario's history of phasing out coal as an energy source.
Watay Power
INFOGRAPHICS, ILLUSTRATION, ANIMATION
CLIENT + TEAM
The Narwhal News Society
Shawn Parkinson (Creative Director)
Fatima Syed (Reporter)
Elaine Anselmi (Editor, ON Bureau Chief)
Across northern Ontario, 24 First Nations that previously relied on diesel generators for power are now connected to the provincial electrical grid. In the communities, the culmination of this decades-long project is cause for celebration, as they also own most of it.
In order to visualise the scale of this project, animated maps were created which illustrated the three phases of the construction of the transmission line from above Thunder Bay till the northernmost Sachigo Lake First Nation.
Creating the maps as GIFs while also leveraging WordPress’s parallax scroll feature allowed us to sustain readers’ attention. Readers scrolled through multiple captions while the map animations continued on loop.
BC Tree Fruit Closure
ILLUSTRATION, ANIMATION
CLIENT + TEAM
The Narwhal News Society
Shawn Parkinson (Creative Director)
Paloma Pacheco (Reporter)
Denise Balkissoon (Exec Editor, ON Bureau Chief)
Due to a cold snap in January 2024, British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley underwent a crisis in apple harvest, which in turn risked the local economy.
I illustrated an animated header image for the story by Paloma Pacheco, in which I depicted an apple branch against a windy scene. With each gust, the apples slowly fade away.
Phasing out Coal
ILLUSTRATION, ANIMATION
CLIENT + TEAM
The Narwhal News Society
Shawn Parkinson (Creative Director)
Fatima Syed (Reporter)
Elaine Anselmi (Editor, ON Bureau Chief)
As Ontario plans its next big energy move, Fatima Syed dove deep into Ontario’s past, tracing its history as the first province to phase out coal-fired electricity generation for the health of its people.
As the majority of the archival images and the newspaper clippings were noticeably from a bygone era, I designed a line-drawing carousel slide projector that would have been contemporaneous with them. A header and a secondary animation were created which depicted the images and clippings sliding in a smooth frame-by-frame animation style.
