Photovisualizing the News
As a communications industry worker, I find myself watching the Olympics not only for the sports competition but for the new media products.
At Beijing 2022, one big area of innovation has been photovisualizations.
Fantastic examples can be seen in the graphical journalism coming from The New York Times.
Reports like "See the Jumps, Twists and Grabs That Brought Eileen Gu Three Olympic Medals" break it all down into frame-by-frame analyses that appreciate and explain.
The reporting combines the best of sports writing, photojournalism, information design and digital experience production into content that is more-engaging than any one of these disciplines can do on its own.
For example … Slopestyle: Tuesday, Feb. 15
After a short paragraph explaining the Slopestyle event, a single frame shows Gu approaching the jump. The image has a stepped edge indicating it is part of a sequence. There is a bouncing downward arrow and a single word of direction, "Scroll".
Scrolling moves Gu up the ramp, and into the air.
Over-labels appear providing textual commentary:
Gu's wide stance helps her use her ski edges and her arms to initiate rotation.
Her windup begins with her right arm out front and her left arm back.
Gu swings both arms to the right, like unwinding a spring.
180°
360°
She initiates the Buick grab after 360 degrees of rotation.
She is able to see the landing as she reaches for the grab.
At this point, the photographs shape-shift into vector illustrations with a long wrapping arrow indicating the direction of Gu's spin. The illustration of the airborne skier in relation to the ground/slope/plane she is flying over, adds a dimension of depth that the photos cannot show well. More like something you’d see in a physics class than the sports pages.
The whole thing then switches back to a photo series. Gu grabs one ski with both hands, continues to spin 540°, 720°, 900° and then sticks the landing. Backwards.
This type of visual, explanatory journalism takes a substantial team effort to put together.
I counted something like 12 bylines for just this one piece!
A little clicking showed the contributors to be from all corners of the newsroom - photographers, information designers, sports journalists, multimedia editors, digital producers.
In terms of digital product-making, this team is pulling off something as challenging as Gu's 900.
Yay!
A parting thought.
The example above brings to mind information designer Nick Felton's 2016 book called Photoviz - Visualizing Information Through Photography.
In the opening Felton predicts "data may become art, which may then become new way of visualizing information and narratives,'“ as he draws a connective line from Eadweard Muybridge's multi-camera motion studies in the 1870-80's, to today's interactive photo-graphics.
Look? Watch? Scroll? Let your attention guide you.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/17/sports/olympics/eileen-gu-halfpipe-ski.html
