Small Town: Arkansas (Docu-series)

Candy Mountain Film Co. is a Brooklyn-based production company specializing in documentary filmmaking. Their online series Small Town consists of unembellished interviews with townspeople from underserved rural communities.
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I worked closely with founder John A. Powers to define their branding and visual identity, deliver promotional assets, and build a bespoke web experience to compliment the series' core themes.

Transforming Content into An Experience

Census is a digital experience designed to compliment and expand upon the style and themes of Season 1.

Embracing the simplicity of the series' premise, it employs a strikingly minimal map interface, using a CMS and custom code to pins each interview to the town it was shot in.

Intuitive Experience, Intriguing Presentation

The product provides an intuitive user experience while retaining a sense of mystery. Like the journey of the filmmakers themselves, Census allows users to stumble headfirst into the unexamined lives of strangers, giving them a sense of geographical grounding.

Iconography

Incorporating custom icons, the map pinpoints are based on "hobo code", a series of symbols vagabonds use to characterize townspeople and territories for future travelers. After reviewing each episode, John and I chose symbols we found most emblematic of the subject matter.

Opening Sequence

Using GAN technology, I produced an impressionistic mountain formation, representing the company's namesake in an abstracted manner. Additionally, I provided an original musical composition and sound design.

Lived-in Design for Lived-in Subject Matter

To accentuate the raw style of the series itself, I opted for hand-drawn typography and background texture. Using pencils, acrylic paint and wax crayons on blemished paper, I welcomed smudges and smears, adding an element of lived-in physicality to the designs.

The physical pieces were then re-photographed, digitally re-arranged for formatting's sake and superimposed with episode stills. To keep a sense of mystery intact, we opted to never show the subject's face in full view.