Kat Downs / Blog / Interactive graphics, multimedia projects, and visual journalism

February 28, 2013 on Multimedia

Just launched this beautiful presentation today. Wilson Andrews and Tim Wong led from the design side. Love the responsive template and the clean and elegant feel.

Posted by Kat Downs on Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Tags: Design and infographics, fun, infographics, Sarah Sampsel, sports, tim wong, washington post, wilson andrews, Work

August 27, 2012 on Information Graphics, Multimedia

Here’s some of what the WaPo team put together for the London Olympics:

The definition of perfection
I designed this piece about how gymnastics scoring worked. Wilson Andrews developed it and edited/animated the videos, and Bonnie Berkowitz did the writing.

Profiles in Speed
This six-part series we developed in the run-up to the Olympics featured greats like Missy Franklin, Michael Phelps and Carmelita Jeter. Videos, infographics, and awesome articles. I especially love the segment on technology.

Are you over the hill for Olympic sports?
As part of the Profiles in Speed series, I developed this graphic which lets you see where you fit into the Olympic age spectrum. Flowing Data wrote about it here.

Four more pieces after the jump! »

Posted by Kat Downs on Monday, August 27, 2012 at 12:09 am
Tags: alberto cuadra, bonnie berkowitz, Design and infographics, fun, graphics, interactive, katie park, olympics, sisi wei, sohail al-jamea, sports, washingtonpost.com, wilson andrews, Work

September 18, 2011 on Multimedia

With Kate and Will back in the news for the rumors about a pregnancy with twins (not true, by the way), I thought, “Hey, what better opportunity to make up for the fact that I never wrote about our royal wedding graphics on the blog?” So here I am. Royal couple junkies, enjoy. And if you’re a true royal wedding fanatic, you might enjoy this video about my roommate, coincidentally also named Kate Middleton (this one is true).

The main piece I worked on was the Westminster Abbey and parade route tour. Sohail Al-Jamea and Alberto Cuadra worked together on the 3-D renderings and animations, and I layered on the interactivity and created the Google Earth flyovers and, with help from Laris Karklis, the parade route maps and Street View layers.

Continue to see how we made the interactive parade route, and how we created 3 types of javascript quizzes »

Posted by Kat Downs on Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Tags: 3-D, features, fun, games, google earth, google street view, Karen Yourish, laura stanton, motion graphics, royal wedding, The Washington Post

February 14, 2011 on Random Thoughts

Cupcakes from a friend’s cupcake decorating party. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Posted by Kat Downs on Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:17 am
Tags: art, food, fun, Photography and multimedia

December 20, 2010 on Information Graphics

I worked on these games last Monday for publication with Tuesday’s health section. Reporter Leslie Tamura collected a whole bunch of tests that indicate how you’re aging compared to peers. We decided to take some of those tests and replicate them for our online readers. We decided on word recall, face recognition and response time. Simple, but fun. Check them out!

Posted by Kat Downs on Monday, December 20, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Tags: dailies, fun, games, health, infographics, leslie tamura, washingtonpost.com, Work

November 13, 2010 on Maps

On Nov. 2, midterm election day, we put up these maps that tracked the results as they came in. For Senate and Governors we had state and county-level data, and we had House districts as well. This suite of maps was published in The Washington Post, as well as on Yahoo! News and the Telegraph (UK). The maps have balance of power charting and tabular results as well as zooming and deep linking features. Read more about how we built the maps »

Posted by Kat Downs on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Tags: demographics, Design and infographics, elections, fun, graphics, Maps, Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso, politics, The Washington Post, Work

September 9, 2010 on Photography and multimedia, Travel

I’ve finally posted some photos from our trip to Italy in August. Matt and I visited Venice, Florence and Rome. It was an incredible trip, and I can’t wait to go back! I loved Vatican City and a bike tour we took in Tuscany, and of course, the canals of Venice. If you want to see even more photos, look on facebook.

Posted by Kat Downs on Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 9:11 am
Tags: fun, Photography and multimedia, Travel