Going Beyond the Text
Do you have a really interesting story or information that you want to tell people? There is so much information out there competing for attention that it’s hard to stand out if you don’t have something unique to your content. So how do you stand out from others? How do you go beyond the text?
There are many strategies, but for this example, we will be talking about Hype. Hype is a tool used for animating content and adding interactive elements. Let’s take some information and see if we can’t organize it and present it in a way that it jumps off the screen using Hype.
Here is a simple article with different information about the statistics of happiness. Pretty simple right? But the information is just flat. All you do is read the text and move on your way. Using Hype can make this more interesting. First you want to create some of your assets. I used Illustrator to create different images in a way that presents the information in a more visual manner.
Now for the fun stuff! Putting these elements in Hype will allows us to do some fun things. Using the timeline and some simple movements, we can make the text appear on screen.
Then its just a simple matter of editing buttons that will trigger the animations and the different timelines. Hype also allows you to apply this to your websites. It will write the code in the background for you and you are able to apply these amazing visuals to your work.
So why is this so much better than the article? Instead of reading just a screen of text, you are presented with a visually rich display that you can interact with and get so much more out of the experience. In this simple example you can see how the information goes beyond the text to become an experience. Below is the finished display of the infographic.
There are other programs that are capable of this, so why should you choose Hype? For one, you get a huge value for the price. You can get Tumult’s Hype for as low as $30. The clean interface makes it really easy to use and navigate. There are other programs out there that have more features but do you need all of them? Even simple animations put your work high above other creators and you don’t have to be an expert to use Hype. It is a wonderful place to start if you are trying to go beyond the text with your work.
Lauren Madsen is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to the xxxx project in the DGM 2280 Course and representative of the skills learned.
