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Use your best Muppets voice for this title.

A humble business card, an integrated brand strategy, a title sequence, a blaring broadside–each graphic design, each telling a story. And storytelling is storytelling no matter the medium. Either you engage your audience or you don’t. Either you communicate your story well or you don’t. Graphic designers tell stories. Therefore good graphic designers are good storytellers. My whole reason for giving up a lucrative career, uprooting my wife and three kids to pursue a masters degree was to be a better graphic designer, hence my efforts to become a better storyteller.

The story I have chosen to tell is that of S/Sgt. Harry Clawson. Harry was an American paratrooper who went missing in action during WWII. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, a Dutch tree farmer from Opheusden, The Netherlands, found his remains in a shallow grave in his tree nursery. Harry’s story is one of personal sacrifice, love of freedom, and the enduring cost of war.

The first step to telling a good story is really knowing the story. I had to research Harry’s story and this being grad school and all, I decided to try something different with my research approach. Using method acting as an inspiration, I developed a process I’m calling “method research”. I immersed myself into Harry’s life by going where he would have gone, seeing what he would have seen, and doing what he would have done. I traveled to Arizona, England, France and The Netherlands. I stood where he stood, where he lived and died. I spoke with those that knew him: his brothers in arms, his sisters, sons, and daughter. I have done some of the things he did: intense physical training, camped in the mountains, jumped from an airplane. Using method research has deepen my understanding of Harry’s story and drawn me closer to its realities, enabling me to tell his story with more sensitivity and authority.

To tell Harry’s story I explore design disciplines that are new to me such as motion graphics, exhibit design, and (gasp) even some writing. At the same time I am further developing current skills like branding and information design. My thesis exhibition is my stage and serves as a place for my actors to hone their craft. I tell Harry’s story utilizing multiple graphic formats combined into exhibition design. I use information graphics in the form of a contextualized timeline combined with geographic mapping. I use the simple and powerful presentation of plain text. I have motion graphics in a triple projector ultra wide film presentation. I also employ semiotic artifact imagery to convey elements of Harry’s character and life. These linear and non-linear, quick and involved formats of Harry’s story combine to give the audience a multi-faceted view of Harry’s life.

A humble business card, an integrated brand strategy, a title sequence, a blaring broadside—each graphic design, each telling a story. At its heart graphic design is storytelling. And storytelling is storytelling no matter the medium. Either you engage your audience or you don’t. Either you communicate your story well or you don’t. My thesis is about exploring new mediums and testing old forms. It’s about trying new things and seeing what happens, while simultaneously honing current skills.

The story I have chosen to tell is that of Harry Clawson. Harry was an American paratrooper who went missing in action during WWII. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, a Dutch tree farmer from Opheusden, The Netherlands, found his remains in a shallow grave on his tree nursery.

My thesis uses an experimental research approach. Using method acting as an inspiration, I developed a process I call “method research”. I immerse myself into Harry’s life by going where he would have gone, seeing what he would have seen, and doing what he would have done. I traveled to Arizona, England, France and The Netherlands. I stood where he stood, where he lived and died. I spoke with those still around that knew him: his brothers in arms, his sisters, sons, and daughter. I have done some of the things he did: intense physical training, camped in the mountains, jumped from an airplane. Using method research has deepen my understanding of Harry’s story and drawn me closer to its realities, enabling me to tell his story of sacrifice and loss with more sensitivity and authority.

My thesis exhibition functions as an experiment of my thesis and a stretching of my abilities rather than an exhibit of my process and results. The exhibit is Harry’s story utilizing multiple graphic formats combined into exhibition design. It uses information graphics in the form of a contextualized timeline combined with geographic mapping. It uses the simple and powerful presentation of plain text. It has motion graphics using a triple wide film presentation. It also employes semiotic artifact imagery to convey elements of the Harry’s character and life.

In the end I have learned that my thesis is about me becoming a better storyteller, a better designer, and a better human being.

// First Forays Into Visual Language

// 4:1 Ratio Test (Best in Full Screen Mode)

The images and sequence and sound are just there to show the capabilities. They aren’t not meant to be interpreted at all.

Harry Allen Clawson’s story is a relevant tale of sacrifice, loss, and the human cost of war. A story of duty, the love of freedom and the love of family more than self. It’s a timeless story, and yet is in danger of being lost to time.

Who could speak for Harry? Can anyone really speak for the dead? How can you get to know someone who is dead? Someone you have never met and never will meet in this lifetime? Someone who has been gone so long that even the memories of him, held by those who did know him, have begun to fade like old posters left in the sun? To make matters even more difficult what if you and the person you are trying to understand are very different in many significant physical, and emotional ways?

Faced with all of these questions I decided I would attack it from every angle I could think of. After several months of contemplation I devised a plan. I would design my own research methodology based on the ways I learned best. I would try and attach my senses to as much of Harry’s story as possible. I would try and experience as much as I could. My research methodology breaks down into four parts: Seeing, Doing, Documenting, and Making.

//Seeing
I would try and see as much of what Harry saw, through photos, movies, and most importantly in person. I would have to go and see where he fought, and died, where he trained and lived. I would listen to music that he listened to, and discover the visual world that surrounded him.

//Doing
I would try and do some of the things he did. Physical training, combat conditioning, virtual combat via video games and paintball, even jumping from a perfectly good airplane. I don’t think I am ready to do Mt. Curahee in 50 minutes (3 miles up 3 miles down) but I have lost 20 pounds since I started this adventure.

//Documenting
I would read everything he wrote. I would read things written about him, or about the places he went or the things he did. I would also document my experiences of Seeing, Doing and Making. I would also try to contextualize Harry’s timeframe with my own through references I could relate to. For example, Harry graduated from High School in 1936. A year that is completely foriegn to me until you relize that is the same year the Wizard of Oz was playing in theaters and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was the number one song.

//Making
As a designer, no research would be complete without making communication pieces relating to Harry’s story. To tryout different mediums and storytelling formats. These research experiments would be just as valuable in finding out more about Harry as standing where his body was found.

It remains to be seen how effective this methodology is in practice. One thing for sure is that while most of it isn’t real, a mere shadow of Harry’s experience, it has still left me in a better position to tell Harry’s story with authority and truthfulness than when I first started. Oddly enough it has been commented several times now that I might know more about Harry than those who actually knew Harry.

With winter break approaching it is a good idea to enumerate what I plan on doing so that I don’t spend the entire holidays roasting by an open fire. It’s also a good time to set out how I plan to proceed with next semester.

// Winter Holidays
Do nothing school related for at least three days straight.
Be with the family as much as they can stand me.
Shake off the drunken stupor of food, sleep and fun.
Bug hunt the AW//Blog.
Create 5 products for sale in the AW//Store.
Finalize all of AW//Studio and AW//Blog. (A huge job)
Finalize Timelines: Master and Contextual.
Write the screenplay.
Scan, review, organize all gathered Media.
Create a mock up of thesis exhibit space. (Approx. 1/12 Scale)
Brainstorm all the different options for Exhibit Space.
A test sketch for each exhibit idea I like.

// Spring 2010
January
Determine—through actual tests—the feasibility of a triple projection system.
Create a rough video draft of the screenplay.
Create digital rough of Master/Contextual/Geographical Timeline.
Finalize exhibit plans leaving room for discovery.
Design, design, make.
February
Finalize video sequences.
Design, design, make.
March
Make, design, make.
Produce + Install.
April
Website + Documentation
May
Graduate

November 12-17, 2009 // Operation Desert Eagle

My horse might have had a name but I was in the desert still the same.
Operation Desert Eagle was a resounding success. I was able to speak to Harry’s two surviving sisters—Angeline Hancock and Edna Rae or Rasky as Harry called her—and I also had the pleasure of interviewing Harry’s daughter Sharon, and Harry’s sister-in-law Olive. Olive, in addition to being Harry’s sister-in-law because she is Melba’s sister, Harry and Olive were in-laws because Bernard (C.B.), Harry’s brother, was married to Olive. Double Trouble!

I spent a lot of time in the Cemetery documenting Harry’s final resting place. On Sunday morning I held a little ceremony where I placed a red stone from Omaha beach and some of the soil from Opheusden on his head stone. It was a touching and unexpected moment of closure for me. Although I have a lot of work left, a lot of love still to give to this project, and one final act of doing to perform, I have come close to “Finding Harry.”

View Finding Harry in a larger map