Analysis

 

 

 

Ellie Hall's Buzzfeed article "'Firefly' Hat Triggers Corporate Crackdown" uses a surprising number of design options. (That's why there's a kitchen sink image here. Get it?) And I mean surprising in a good way; I'm impressed by the variety of ways she moved beyond simply presenting plain old text.



Images: Most notably is Hall's use of images. Not only is the article heavily visual, the images are also ordered so that viewing them sequentially along with the text builds a sort of narrative of their own. That is, they play off of each other, making visual gags when one follows another.



Text: Working in close connection with the images are the two main fonts. The main text is a surprisingly large font, with only occasional quotes and details given in a more usual web-reading font size. 



Along with the images, the large font gives the article the feel of a PowerPoint presentation (the good kind), where images and short, headline-ish words are paired up.



Screenshots: Though technically images, the number of screenshots is notable here. Hall includes shots of webpages, emails, and Facebook posts, giving readers a sense of witnessing the real, primary data behind the story. Because, well, they are.

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Animated GIFs: Again, while technically images as well, the animated GIFs give Hall a chance to jokingly comment on this fannish controversy in the language of fans. Notably, she doesn't seem to have created these GIFs (because she credits them to outside sites)--a move that subtly shows her allegiance to the fans, their ways of communicating, and remix culture generally.

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Embedded Tweets: Instead of simply describing conversations on Twitter, Hall actually embeds the tweets she discusses. Again, this gives readers the sense of being "part of the action," and it gives us a clear invitation to participate. After all, each of those embedded tweets has a big "follow" button right there, practically begging to be pushed.