#journalprompt8

‘How one Stupid Tweet Blew up Justine Sacco’s Life?’ 

I found the illustration of this article to be quite successful as it gives readers a break away from the long list of text, not only that the images match up with the story allowing readers to understand the meaning of the story by using simple lines and drawing to illustrate them. An example would be the Singled out bird surrounded by multiple birds used in illustrating Justine Sacco. As we could see from the article, she was once just a regular member of the community but due to her “Tweets” was singled out and hated by majority of people.  

The tarred and feathered bird was also a good illustration as to it illustrated all the threats which she had been receiving from people she barely even knew and also the public humiliation which she had received

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html

           The illustrations in this article were done by Andrew B. Meyers. His style is very colorful and very clean (the use of digital media contributing to this look). While still being clean, the more realistic design of the birds (rather than the two dimensional twitter logo) helps to connect the idea that actions within a social media outlet can have real world consequences, and anyone who knows Twitter will be able to connect the bird with said social medium. In essence, a person who looks simply at the illustrations would easily be able to distinguish what the article is talking about. With slight exception to the tar covered bird illustration, the style, to me, is too clean and a bit too colorful. This element as well as how some were composed, namely the one of the bird in the corner with the shaming cone atop its head, brought a lighter sense to the presumed topic, and even a bit of humor (which can play into the story, considering that, according to Justine in one of her quotes, her tweet that started this whole thing was meant to be humorous/satirical). The article itself turned out to be slightly more serious than the illustrations had led me to believe. This small detail brought a somewhat distracting element to the article, but it wasn’t overwhelming. The illustrations did in fact enhance the story. We as human beings are very visual creatures because our eyes take in visual features before we even begin to read anything. Even the shape of paragraphs or the style of font registers before we read an article. With a plethora of material on the web, it is important to have some design sense in the layout of an article, and to add illustrations or another visual aid. Having illustrations gives the audience a quick overview of what an article will be about, and having a good illustration, one that is visually appealing to the audience and valid to the subject matter, pulls the reader in even more. The fact that these illustrations are very clear in the idea they are trying to convey, enough that if I were just skimming through I would be able to pick up on the idea in an instant, and they are quite appealing to the eye, leads me to conclude that these illustrations work well to enhance the reading experience.