I was a little overwhelmed visiting The Story of Stuff for the first time. There was such a variety of visuals to look at, I wasn’t sure where to click initially. While I normally would have been intrigued by the website, I began to look at it from the web publishing standpoint. It was daunting.
I can only imagine the type of HTML and CSS coding that goes into creating a website like The Story of Stuff. My favorite element on the website had to be the drawings on many of the tabs and pages. They added a lot of quirk and character to a website that’s raising a very serious issue.
The Story of Stuff seems to know how fast viewers are consuming information on the web. Their videos are fast and get the point across quickly with graphics and interesting visuals. And that proves they know what they’re doing. It doesn’t matter how interesting material your presenting is, if you don’t capture the viewers’ attention. The videos I skimmed through certainly seemed to do that. It’s similar to the saying, “If the tree falls, does anyone here it?” If information isn’t presented well, will anyone learn anything?
I chose to watch the “Story of Bottled Water” because we’ve all consumed bottled water at one point or another. I make a conscious effort to drink out of a Camelbak so it was nice to see my efforts to avoid bottled water be reaffirmed with details slamming the idea of drinking Fiji or Smart Water.
While I was interested in the facts and could list a lot of facts about the evils of bottled water, I paid more attention to how the video visualized them. Like the website, they were slightly cartoonish, but made their point and kept me entertained as numerous numbers and facts were thrown at me. I almost felt like it was a “School of Rock” video for adults without the song and dance, but I won’t complain the presenter didn’t break out into a song.
I thought the text at the bottom of the screen was a nice way to process the information in the video and the images provided quick access to different talking points.
Even though The Story of Stuff has a plethora of visuals, it maintains consistent themes throughout its website including its fonts, color scheme and page layout. It clearly implements some of Gestalt’s principles with its uniform pattern, but it still maintains its individuality.