Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Explorable Explanations: Hold the text to a single column of roughly 600px and place each figure beside or directly after the paragraph it belongs to, close enough that the handle and its effect share one field of view
- Type
- Set in Explorable Explanations's manner (Set the prose like ordinary reading matter; mark only the live numbers, with an underline and a color, and never with a different typeface), and let Scrollytelling's lettering (Keep the body in one column. The scroll sets the pace, not the page, so hold the measure narrow and place headings only at joints in the story) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Explorable Explanations's material (Limit the interaction to grabbing and dragging, with no input fields and no submit buttons, and always ship default values that already say something); bring in exactly one thing from Scrollytelling (Build only changes that can run backwards, such as opacity crossfades and map moves, each tied one to one with scroll distance).
- Colour
- Build on #FFFFFF, #0000FF, #FDFFE9 and admit one accent from #000000, #FFFFFF, #4A4A4A.
Where they fight
- Explorable Explanations and Scrollytelling both belong to Reading on the Web, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Explorable Explanations If the content only shows up once the reader touches something, everyone who does not touch it gets a blank article.
- Scrollytelling Tying a one shot animation to the scroll leaves a reader who scrolls back looking at nothing, and makes the middle of the article impossible to reread.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Explorable Explanations (technique, 2011–) and their accent from Scrollytelling (layout, 2012–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Explorable Explanations exists for: publishing an explanation built on a model, where readers should be able to change the assumptions themselves, or teaching material that has to show not just the conclusion but the conditions under which it flips. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Explorable Explanations - Numbers inside the running text sit on a dotted underline and turn blue when touched - Dragging one of those numbers rewrites the following sentence and the neighboring figure at once - Figures are not quarantined in a separate sandbox but sit continuous with the paragraphs around them - Untouched, the piece still reads, because the default values already make the figures meaningful Composition: Hold the text to a single column of roughly 600px and place each figure beside or directly after the paragraph it belongs to, close enough that the handle and its effect share one field of view. Type and lettering: Set the prose like ordinary reading matter; mark only the live numbers, with an underline and a color, and never with a different typeface. ## Accent comes from Scrollytelling, used sparingly - A graphic that holds still on screen while a single narrow column of text passes over it - Changes made by opacity and by moving a map, so that scrolling back undoes them in the same order - Photography, video and data visualization sharing one article - A path that is either straight through or branches into an optional deeper detour and returns Let one material quality come from it: Build only changes that can run backwards, such as opacity crossfades and map moves, each tied one to one with scroll distance. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #FFFFFF, carry the structure in #FDFFE9 and #0000FF, and let a single accent come from #4A4A4A. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: technique, play, trust. ## Where they fight - Explorable Explanations and Scrollytelling both belong to Reading on the Web, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Explorable Explanations: If the content only shows up once the reader touches something, everyone who does not touch it gets a blank article. - Scrollytelling: Tying a one shot animation to the scroll leaves a reader who scrolls back looking at nothing, and makes the middle of the article impossible to reread. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Explorable Explanations 2011– / Technique / Reading on the Web
The name Bret Victor gave, in a March 2011 essay of the same title, to writing that embeds a running model inside the prose. Numbers in the body text carry a dotted underline and can be dragged, and pulling one rewrites the rest of the sentence and the figure beside it at the same time. He described the result as a written argument whose assertions are backed by explorable computational models.
- Scrollytelling 2012– / Layout / Reading on the Web
A web page form in which the reader's scroll position is the clock of the story, with graphics, maps and video changing as the page moves and reversing when the reader scrolls back. Visualization researchers treat it as the web equivalent of long form journalism and describe its structure as either linear or elastic, the elastic kind letting a reader dive deeper on demand. News outlets including the New York Times, the BBC and The Economist built the form out.
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