Isabella Carapella
MULTIMEDIA DESIGNER || ART DIRECTOR
pride.gif

Pride

Over a year’s course, HuffPost reporters interviewed multiple military wives and girlfriends whom have been abused by their partner. Through these interviews, there was a very clear pattern uncovered. Service members are rarely convicted for their abuse and victims are ignored to the point of suffering devastating consequences.

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With these strange times, social distancing and Pride celebrations relying on virtual platforms, we are all in a little need of some virtual love. 

In the 90s the World Wide Web (WWW) opened a doorway to a virtual world and helped us reimagined how we interact with people. In this new decade peppered with unforeseeable circumstances we are relying even more so on our virtual relationships to come together and celebrate love.

An instagram gif created by Tim Singleton, art directed by me.

An instagram gif created by Tim Singleton, art directed by me.

HuffPost’s Pride Reimagined is a virtual hub for our audience to keep up to date with all virtual Pride happenings and bringing everything that they love and stand for in Pride into their own space.

As lead Art Director for this series I worked closely with the editorial team to create multimedia content and stylized branding in celebration of our LGBTQ+ communities. This series includes an animated header, interactive augmented reality (AR) experience, instagram gif stickers and a daily calendar with global Pride events.

With a style direction in mind I began storyboarding ideas for the header animation. I started with sketches to visually explain my idea to animator Fredy Delgado Jr. We worked closely together in these early stages to make sure timeline and assets were set for the animation phase. To keep things simple, I storyboarded three frames, each asset separated into individual layers for Fredy. I included brief animation direction, a color palette and branding guidelines for Fredy to follow.

 
 

Below you’ll find the finalized animated header graphic.

 
 
 
 

While Fredy worked on the animation I began building out the AR experience with help from Henry Keyser. This experience involves a carousel of 5 different pride flags with a description, two of which include an interview with LGBTQ+ members. This AR experience gives users the opportunity to photograph themselves in front of a Pride flag and share with loved ones. You can play with the interactive experience through the click through below.

 
 
 
 
 
 

The final design element for Pride Reimagined involved animated gifs for Instagram Story. These social media gifs were designed to celebrate pride and be shared with friends and followers on Instagram. I art directed three LBGTQ+ artists while they created seven different gifs. Below you can see the final gifs that are now published.

 
 
 
 
 
 

CREDITS:

Creative Direction: Ivylise Simones

Art Direction: Isabella Carapella

Animation: Fredy Delgado Jr.

Instagram Gifs: Sally Francis, Tim Singleton, and Becky Ziegler

AR Producers: Isabella Carapella and Henry Keyser