Special Angels Investments: Zion Cemetery

An interactive memorial to Tampa's oldest known African American cemetery — erased under Jim Crow, rediscovered in 2019, and honored across web, AR, and VR. I led the creative direction, co-art directed, visual storytelling, and UI/UX systems.

Recognition: Vega Digital Awards — Gold · Hermes Creative Awards — Platinum

Overview

Zion Cemetery was established in 1901 to serve Tampa's thriving Black communities of Dobyville and Robles Pond. Within decades it was illegally taken, erased from maps, and buried beneath a whites-only housing project. In 2019, ground-penetrating radar confirmed what descendants had long known: an estimated 382 people still rest beneath Robles Park Village.

Our task was to transform this history into a living memorial — an experience descendants could enter, learn from, and carry forward. The result spans three platforms: a fully interactive WebGL journey, a mobile AR experience placed on the land itself, and an immersive VR story guided by spoken word.

Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.

Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.
Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.

The Challenge

How do you design something beautiful about something brutal?

Every visual decision carried weight. The experience needed to hold grief and reverence without becoming unbearable, and to teach hard history without flattening it into a lecture. Working from ceremonial artifacts, unarchived newspaper clippings, and witness accounts, we built a visual language that lets memory — not tragedy — lead.

Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.
Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.

The art direction pairs archival truth with symbolic imagery. A recurring figure — a girl in a purple dress, jump rope in hand — represents the lives and childhoods lived on this land. Bold red brushstrokes and maze-like pathways cut across desaturated present-day photography, marking the cemetery's hidden footprint beneath the modern neighborhood. Mixed-media collages layer sepia photographs, protest signs, and physical artifacts into dimensional dioramas of each era.

Building the Visual Language

Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.
Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.
Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.
Each interactive scene was a living exhibit, with stories woven into the very fabric of every image and document. Here, narratives were not just displayed but waited to be uncovered by the user.

The journey opens in a luminous hall inspired by AME church architecture — white vaulted arches, tall windows, light pouring in. It was designed as a threshold: a place of reverence that asks the user to slow down before stepping into the history. From this central sanctuary, the space branches into three wings — the maps, the timeline, and the story itself — so navigation feels like moving through a memorial, not clicking through a website.

Designing the Space

A digital rendering of a white, modern church interior with high vaulted ceilings, pointed arches, and a central aisle leading to a bright window at the end.
A bright, white interior of a church or cathedral with three large arched windows and a circular rug on the floor.
Illustration of an open-air structure with tall archways and pillars, with grassy hills in the background.
A digital rendering of an empty modern space with high white walls, tall arched doorways, and a circular area with a small pathway leading to it.
A digital illustration showing the transition of a neighborhood from past to present. The left side depicts older, monochrome housing units, while the right side shows modern, more colorful buildings. A large red abstract shape dominates the sky with
A woman in a purple dress appears to be bouncing on a trampoline in courtyard, with a red maze around her, surrounded by beige townhouses and trees.
A mixed media collage depicting a historical scene from the Jim Crow era with a sepia-toned photograph of a cemetery, a small wooden stage with black railings, an old car, a shovel in a mound of dirt, and a sign for the 1894 land sale at St. Zion Cem
An artistic scene depicting a gravesite with candles, bottles, and figurines, for a funeral or memorial service at Zion Cemetery.
A model of a memorial for the 45-acre all-Black community linked by sandy roads, enclosed by a brick fence with candles, small figures, and trees, with a sign reading 'Robles Cemetery' and street signs for Florida Avenue and Virginia Avenue.

The narrative unfolds in three acts: the founding era and its burial ceremonies, the Segregation Era, and the Present Day. Interactive hotspots reveal ceremony traditions, land records, and first-person accounts, letting users set their own pace through the material. To the left of the sanctuary, historical maps trace the land transactions that erased Zion from the record; to the right, a scrollable timeline surfaces unarchived photos and articles year by year.

The interface system had to travel: the same story adapts across desktop WebGL, mobile web AR that lets users stand on the actual site and see what lies beneath, and a VR experience with hand tracking — no controllers — where users reach out and touch the story, guided by a spoken-word poem from Ebony Payne-English. The experience closes with a call to action, connecting users directly with their representatives.

Crafting the UI/UX Journey

UX
Screenshots of a virtual reality presentation about Zion Cemetery, showing historical information, AR views, and efforts to preserve or memorialize the cemetery, with black, white, red, and gray color schemes.
Frame 54.jpg
Frame 53.jpg

Virtual Reality

Special Angels wanted to further the story and tell it in virtual reality, creating new interactions not possible on the web.

The story of Zion was elevated further using the voice of Ebony Payne. Experience the immersive tale now on the Meta Quest Store

A digital illustration of a girl in a purple dress standing on a colorful maze or playground, with large red wings or structures behind her, set between two buildings in a courtyard. The scene has a slightly surreal, artistic style.
Digital artwork depicting five people in historical attire sitting around a memorial site with candles, tombstones in the background, and overlay text referencing the 'Conch Shell' and a camera view instruction.

Augmented Reality

Each experience we created was also designed to be a launchpad for further engagement on other platforms. Our work on the story of Zion in Augmented Reality proved this by crafting a powerful narrative that enabled the Special Angels organization to secure more funding.

Series of five smartphone screens showing an augmented reality experience for Zion Cemetery app, including permissions, landing page, enabling AR, AR setup, and viewing cemetery map with a candle icon in the center.
A series of five illustrated screens showing the renovation of Zion Cemetery over different years from 1901 to 2023, depicting activities like candle lighting, remembrance ceremonies, land selling, excavation, and a call to action for community chang

Impact & Awards

The project earned a Gold at the Vega Digital Awards (Cause-Related Websites & Mobile) and a Platinum at the Hermes Creative Awards (Interactive Media). The VR experience was released on the Meta App Lab, and the web experience remains live as an ongoing educational tool — part of a growing movement to recenter marginalized cemeteries through preservation and education.

Voices from the community shaped it throughout, including audio and video from Fred Hearns, President of the Zion Cemetery Preservation & Maintenance Society.

Next Project: T-Mobile

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