Thanks to Aviva Michaelov at the New York Times Op-Ed page for inviting us to create an Op-Chart this Memorial Day. For this piece, about how the use of DNA technology has allowed the military to identify the remains of each of the unknown soldiers from Vietnam on, we created a paper flower wreath to memorialize the death of the soldiers that died in each war. The size of each flower is (roughly) proportional to the total number of soldiers lost in each war.

Thanks goes to master crafters Cara Brower and Sarah Lutkenhaus, who helped mastermind the flower making for three days straight. A few progress shots follow the jump.

We started out with rough sketches to establish the composition. Here we tried out a few flower ideas with recycled paper.

Cara and Sarah researched paper flower designs and tested them out until we found a few that worked.

We also experimented with several colors and printed background textures to create a subtle environment for the wreath that would translate to newsprint.

We shot the real wreath multiple times over the course of several days, adjusting the composition and adding additional flowers to get the proportions right. When it came to assembling the final wreath, we came up with some fun workarounds to get the flowers properly positioned.