“Journey for Justice: Ju Hong’s Story” is an Artifact crafted by group members Aarush, Sudiksha, Sandhya, and Neil. After using the storyline of Ju Hong as our guide & reference for this entire Artifact, we have created a brief graphic version of Ju Hong’s story relating to undocumented immigration.
The customized and hand-coded coding by Aarush for the website features the narrative itself through a series of 10 comic style panels that are made on Canva, making up the 5 sections of the narrative overall. These sections are inspired by the sections in the original article by Hong. We furthermore chose to take inspiration from "The Boat" by Matt Huynh, a different graphic narrative, with our inclusion of meaningful pop-ups featuring a caption for multiple panels that expand upon the story of Ju Hong himself, with the content of the story being directly taken from Hong’s guiding narrative. We also have a separate tab “Background Information” that correlates with the 5 sections of the graphic narrative, with each of the sections exemplifying a detailed summary of context and background information about that section and Ju Hong. Finally, we have “Sources,” which details various citations and sources.
“Journey for Justice: Ju Hong’s Story”’s purpose is to represent undocumented students in their hardships so that readers can use it as a meaningful educational opportunity. By focusing on our shared humanity through the artifact centering the true story of Ju Hong, the purpose of the Artifact is to, overall, provide information and educate our audience about legal and social hardships for undocumented students when they migrate to America, with or without their families.[9] The interactive medium will engage with the audience and benefit the viewer’s understanding of the shared and collective human struggles undocumented students go through. This way, the project will tell a personal story but also be an educational narrative on important topics such as the DREAM Act and immigration reformation effects, especially through the Background Information section.
There are two intended audiences of this piece: undocumented student activists and individuals interested in learning about the undocumented experience. For student activists, this graphic narrative provides them real-life context and sources for their future efforts.[9] For the general public, the artifact depicts the realities undocumented students find very often, aiming to increase awareness and maintain regulations that better the lives of these students.
Presenting our project through a website-based narrative allows for an interactive experience that encourages the readers to engage with the content. Both the hover-over captions and corresponding Background Information sections allow for a deeper understanding of the visuals. By handing the readers the creative freedom to view additional context and resources on visuals they are interested in, the usage of the webpage turns the story into a multifaceted learning experience and educational tool. A website is also a spectacular and well-arranged manner of showcasing different sections of information and makes the process of education and the purpose of being informational a lot easier, as simply moving from tab to tab gives readers access to quite a few resources and sources of information.
As artists of this artifact, we decided to craft our panels for the comic by using Canva software. Sudiksha first used Ju Hong’s original narrative events in a chronological-like order to ideate a plan detailing what imagery & what corresponding interactive element should be included on each of the comic panels. Using this overarching plan, Sandhya then found corresponding graphics directly on Canva and included speech and thought bubbles to showcase the ideas and a brief summary of Ju Hong’s Story. Canva provided a great avenue to view plenty of graphics options to create scenery, background images, characters, and textual elements that together, were useful in coming up with comic panels.
One of the primary choices we made in our panels that make the panels more meaningful is implementing a version of color theory, in that each panel has a certain color overlay that correlates with the respective atmosphere that is being represented within one panel. Many graphic narratives that we have read in class or seen elsewhere use this strategy, which is why it helps ours become more meaningful as well. For example, panels representing moments of growth have a green overlay, whereas panels that represent Ju as disheartened or sad are dark blue or black. The border surrounding each panel in the website also matches in color. Moreover, we also decided to put the focus on Ju Hong in all the graphics by increasing the transparency of all the background elements and scenery components, which makes Ju Hong stand out more in contrast to the background. This shows how important Ju was in all of his experiences and his own actions, and how he was able to essentially become a spectacular guide of his own story. Many of the graphic elements are layered on top of each other as well, which, especially in the chaotic or distraught scenes, helps signify the real chaos and stress of that panel.