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 Photo Essay: One dominant image per spread and never equal sizes
- Type
- Set in Photo Essay's manner (Write captions in a voice apart from the body text), 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 Photo Essay's material (Full-page frames open and close, denser pages between); 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 #e1d9c6, #9d2e2c, #2e3648 and admit one accent from #000000, #FFFFFF, #4A4A4A.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Photo Essay Good pictures get lined up without a sequence being designed, every spread arrives at the same pitch, and the reader loses any reason to turn the page.
- 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 Photo Essay (layout, 1936–1972) and their accent from Scrollytelling (layout, 2012–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Photo Essay exists for: long-form field reporting laid out to be read straight through in print or online, or annual reports that retell a business as the work of people. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Photo Essay - Sequenced narrative arcs - Size contrast across spreads - The full-page key image - Captions that narrate Composition: One dominant image per spread and never equal sizes. Type and lettering: Write captions in a voice apart from the body text. ## 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 #e1d9c6, carry the structure in #9d2e2c and #2e3648, 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: intimacy, exhilaration, trust, technique. ## What goes wrong - Photo Essay: Good pictures get lined up without a sequence being designed, every spread arrives at the same pitch, and the reader loses any reason to turn the page. - 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
- Photo Essay 1936–1972 / Layout / Publishing and Editing
The page form LIFE perfected: photographs edited into narrative arcs. Spread-scale contrasts, opening and closing images and the voice of captions gave photography a story grammar.
- 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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