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The Daily Tar Heel
Visually Speaking

Behind the scenes: April 10, 2013

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The Daily Tar Heel front page on April 10 included a story about potential changes to Chapel Hill food truck regulations. The DTH design & graphics staff put together a set of illustrations to accompany the story. Below, desk editor Kevin Uhrmacher talks about the project.

The idea for a food truck front page story started when city editor Chelsey Dulaney approached me about the topic. We talked about the questions people might have surrounding food trucks. I was particularly drawn to the design of the trucks, as well as the behind-the-scenes details of running a mobile business.

After compiling several pages of questions about food trucks, we noted which questions could be answered best in a visual form. We hoped to talk with local food truck owners about how they started their business and present a guide to starting a food truck. City writer Lauren Grady did a great job reporting on the information to fill this sidebar. After getting it, our staffers put together a few illustrations to accompany the steps to opening a food truck.

How-to food truck graphic

We also thought it would be helpful to introduce our audience to some of the food trucks that can be found around Chapel Hill and Carrboro. To do this, staffers Jessica Milbern, Jessica Karsner, Sarah Delk and Katie Perkinson illustrated local food trucks that Lauren had contacted.

Got food trucks?

I decided that these illustrations would be complemented best by a large illustration of a food truck for the front page. Since only one food truck currently operates in Chapel Hill, we decided that it would be the subject of the large illustration. We found a quality reference photo for the Baguettaboutit truck, and I went to work illustrating the various parts and pieces of it.

I completed the illustration over a span of about 24 hours, working on it mostly Monday night and all day Tuesday.

Baguettaboutit illustration

To tie in the food truck theme above the fold, Melissa Borden worked on a treatment for our flag. The first draft she showed me used a muted color palette that looked nice, but just seemed a bit too ‘put together.’ If there were four random food trucks driving by, they wouldn’t all be designed to look nice together, would they?

For each truck, I encouraged her to pick a different type of cuisine to model the truck after. While that meant color palettes might clash, it did a better job communicating the visual feast that is a random crop of food trucks. Each truck took on its own flair with the addition of small details to add interest.

Flag treatment

Check out the article that accompanied the illustration here.

Food truck front

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