DesignLab

Graphic Essays and Comics

Overview   |   Recommended Software   |   Student-Made Examples   |   Other Examples   |   Instructional Video

A graphic essay (sometimes called a visual essay) uses a combination of text and images to explore a specific topic. Graphic essays can look like comics, graphic novels, magazines, collages, artist books, textbooks, or even websites. Graphic essays often first take the form of written essays and then have graphic elements added to enrich the reader experience. Unlike infographics, which also combine text and images, graphic essays are often more text-based and usually have a narrative arc or specific reading order.

Comics are a genre used to express ideas through images combined with text or other visual information. Comics can take the form of a single panel or a series of juxtaposed panels of images, sometimes called a strip. Text is conveyed via captions below the panel(s), or speech bubbles and onomatopoeias within the panel(s), to indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. Graphic novels are often considered to be a longer form of comics, typically in book form.

A web-based graphic essay can take the form of a blog or a single page website, such as a Microsoft Sway page or an interactive Prezi. For Microsoft Sway and Prezi graphic essays, see the examples below. If you are creating a blog we recommend visiting the Web-Based Projects page .

Graphic Essay Design Tip: Graphic essays can take many forms, so we recommend being creative within the scope of your project! Get some help from DesignLab to brainstorm options and talk through the various tools available!

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Recommended Software

There are many different software programs that can be used to create graphic essays. Below is a list of the software that we recommend for making a graphic essay. We organized the software by category and put the software from top to bottom from best to worst. We recommend using a software you know well or learning the software well enough to establish an easy workflow, so you can spend less time troubleshooting and spend more time on your project. Check out our Software Support page for links to tutorials for all of these programs.

General Graphic Essay Software

Canva Logo

Web-Based Graphic Essay Software

Microsoft Sway Logo

Comic-Specific Graphic Essay Software

Comic Life Logo

Student-Made Examples

Print style graphic essay.

Becoming a Witness by Jessica Posnock

Becoming a Witness Thumbnail Image

Creative Graphic Essay

Virtual Communication by Max Hautala   *Award Winning*

digital graphic essay examples

Curb Magazine (2012) by Journalism 417

Curb Magazine Thumbnail Image

Web-Based (Magazine) Graphic Essay

Curb Magazine (Current) by Journalism 417

digital graphic essay examples

Web-Based (Sway) Graphic Essay

Language Influences Culture, Thoughts, and Identity by Kristen Luckow   *Award Winning*

Language Influences Culture, Thoughts, and Identity Thumbnail Image

Dyslexia by Maria Swanke *Award Winning*

Dyslexia Thumbnail Image

Other Examples

Web-based (blog) graphic essay.

Switch It Up: Graphic Essay by Amanda Zieba

Sceeenshot of Switch It Up Graphic Essay

Graphic Novel

Graphic Novels in the Classroom by Gene Yang

Screenshot of Graphic Novels in the Classroom

Instructional Video

The Daring English Teacher on Teachers Pay Teachers Secondary ELA resources Middle School ELA High School English

Assigning a Graphic Essay as an Essay Alternative: 5 Sites to Use

One of my favorite ways to assess my students’ essay-writing skills without actually assigning a traditional essay is with the graphic essay . A graphic essay is an excellent essay alternative for the middle school ELA or high school English classroom.

A graphic essay is a graphic representation that contains all of the essential essay elements. It combines writing, visual elements, and design. When assigning a graphic essay, you can have students include any particular aspect from the essay that you want.

Essay writing ideas for the secondary ELA classroom

Getting Started

Assigning a graphic essay in the middle school ELA or high school English classroom

Once you know what you want to assess, start mapping out the student requirements. I’m pretty old-school when it comes to things and prefer to draft out my notes with paper and pencil. When I do this, I make a list of all of the elements that I want my students to include. For a recent project, I wanted them to include a variety of features: introduction, big ideas with supporting evidence, counter argument, quick facts, visual data representation, and a Works Cited page.

Work Before Design

Once you have your graphic essay outlined, it is time to assign it to the students. However, and I cannot stress this enough, you don’t want them to focus on the visual and graphic elements first. That is just a hot mess waiting to happen. You know how it will go. Some students will spend the entire class period deciding between a blue or green spot color design element. By the time the class period ends, they’ll have a lovely purple box on their graphic essay, but that will probably all they have accomplished—one box.

Instead, try this. Have your students work on a brainstorming organizer first. You’ll want them to brainstorm, write, and curate all of the content for the graphic essay before they start the design process. When I complete this project in my classroom, I have them draft everything, find all of the images they want to include, and submit that work for a grade before they even start the design process.

Assigning a Graphic Essay as an Essay Alternative in Secondary ELA

Students either love or hate the graphic design process of this alternative essay project, and that is to be expected. When we get to the design process of this project, I try to give my students several different options for creating the final project that matches different graphic design comfort levels. A few of my students usually want to use Adobe Photoshop and design everything from scratch, a few need extra guidance working in a Google Slide, and the majority are excited to try a new online platform. Please note, this is not an ad. These websites did not pay to be included in this post.

One thing that I cannot emphasize enough for this type of project is that I grade content and not design. Let me repeat that: I assess the content of the work and not the quality of the design.

Here’s a look at some of the different platforms I suggest my students use to create their graphic essay. This list is in order from easiest to most advanced.

1. Google Docs – Most students are already familiar with Google Docs. Using the draw tool, students can create images, place text, and color to their Google Docs. For my students who need the most assistance with the design process, I have them use my initial template (which I created using the draw tool in Google Docs) and a plug and play template.

2. Google Slides – Some students might prefer Google Slides over Google Docs because they might feel like they have more freedom. Using Google Slides, students can change the dimensions of each slide to 8.5×11 inches (or larger), and use the textbox tool, shape tool, and other design tools to create the graphic essay.

3. Canva.com – I love Canva because it provides students with different design templates and elements. While there is a paid version, I tell all of my students to use the free option. Using Canva, students can select a flier because that is preset to 8.5×11 inch dimensions. Once students are in Canva, there are a ton of free design tools. Students can choose from a variety of options, including preset text designs, frames, shapes, data (which is excellent for inserting bar graphs and pie charts), and pictures. Students can even upload their own images to the site as well!

4. Adobe Spark – Adobe Spark is another great online tool for students to create graphic essays and other multimedia presentations. Students can choose a custom size to create an 8.5×11 inch poster, and Adobe Spark also has premade text elements and templates to choose from.

5. Piktochart.com – Personally, I like Piktochart more for having students create infographics instead of graphic essays, but Piktochart still works. Students can the custom size or letter size to create their graphic. Piktochart has more advanced design features, and one unique design feature is that students can design their project in blocks. Similar to Canva and Adobe Spark, students can also upload their own images to their creation.

Assigning a Graphic Essay as an Essay Alternative in Secondary ELA

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Assigning a Graphic Essay as an Essay Alternative in Secondary ELA

Sharing the File

Once students finish creating their graphic essays, I like to have them upload their creations to one location so that all of my students can see the work that everyone created. My favorite site for this is Padlet. If you haven’t used Padlet before, it is like an online corkboard. Students can post their designs to your class’s board. Students can also comment on other students’ work if you want to add a gallery walk element to this project.

Assigning a Graphic Essay as an Essay Alternative in Secondary ELA

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DartWrite Digital Portfolio Project

Dartmouth's home for digital writing portfolios

Digital Essay Project (Assignment Example)

Tina Van Kley has asked her Writing 5 students to re-mediate a research essay as what she calls (borrowing from Dan Cohen) a "digital essay." Students radically reshape and rewrite their projects for a public, online audience. They work toward the early drafts by exploring public writing on the web, noticing how the conventions of academic writing are both harnessed and changed in public online writing.  Students draft and complete the project as a single page on their portfolio sites. You can see an example of student work from winter 2019: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/rayhcrist22/digital-essay/

Tina has shared a copy of the assignment text as it appeared in a recent class:

Project 3: Digital Essay

Your final project is to adapt your topic and research for Project 2 for a new, broad audience and digital medium, using your Dartmouth WordPress site.

Historian and New Media scholar Dan Cohen defines the digital essay (or – more controversially – “blessay”) as “a manifestation of the convergence of journalism and scholarship in mid-length forms online.” He cites the kind of thoughtful, informed writing found at places like The Atlantic’s website (Links to an external site.), Longform.org (Links to an external site.), and The New Yorker (Links to an external site.), or hear on NPR shows and podcasts like the investigative pieces on This American Life (Links to an external site.). We will read and listen to examples of such work to discuss the genre and its features. Some characteristics of the digital essay, as developed by Cohen (Links to an external site.):

  • Mid-length: more ambitious than a blog post, less comprehensive than an academic article. Written to the length that is necessary, but no more. If we need to put a number on it, generally 1,000-3,000 words.
  • Informed by academic knowledge and analysis, but doesn’t rub your nose in it.
  • Uses the apparatus of the web more than the apparatus of the academic journal, e.g., links rather than footnotes. Where helpful, uses supplementary evidence from images, audio, and video—elements that are often missing or flattened in print.
  • Expresses expertise but also curiosity. Conclusive, but also suggestive.
  • Written for both specialists and an intelligent general audience. Avoids academic jargon—not to be populist, but rather out of a feeling that avoiding jargon is part of writing well.

Additional characteristics:

  • The writer is often "present" in the piece, via use of first-person pronouns and/or anecdotes.
  • Digital essays look different from traditional academic essays. Rather than titles, they have headlines and sub-headlines that give the motive and/or thesis. Paragraphs are often much shorter, and spacing is used strategically for online consumption, which prioritizes speed, efficiency, and high degree of skim-ability.

As with Projects 1 and 2, Project 3 is argumentative, but the approach taken should be exploratory and questioning, as implied by Cohen’s phrase “conclusive but also suggestive.” The imagined audience is anyone who might find your site in a search related to your topic, i.e., general but willing to read something that would take 45 minutes to an hour to read.

Basic Requirements:

  • Use WordPress site
  • 1,000-3,000 words in length
  • Includes both visual and/or aural content that is integrated with the writing
  • Includes at least 2 primary and at least 3 secondary sources (at least 2 of which should be scholarly)
  •  Is the essay clearly addressed to a broad audience?
  • Does the essay make appropriate use of the digital medium (e.g., includes a/v content, hyperlinks, etc.), or does it look like a typical academic essay copied and pasted onto a web page?
  • Are digital elements (such as video, audio, images, etc.) incorporated effectively into the writing, and captioned, cited, or linked to appropriately?
  • Does the essay identify the most appropriate source materials and methods for researching the topic?
  • Is the essay’s thesis persuasive? Is it supported with convincing evidence and analysis?
  • Is the essay organized, and does it include sufficient background for audiences unfamiliar with the topic?

Hippocampus Magazine

CRAFT: Let’s Get Graphic: A Look at the Visual Essay by Nicole Breit

August 1, 2018.

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If you’re keen to tell new kinds of stories – or old stories in new ways – consider these ten “visual” approaches to writing short-form memoir.

1. The Photo Essay

The art of the photo essay lies in the writer’s careful selection of images balanced with the inclusion of text. Will the photos drive the narrative, or will they fill in textual “gaps” to move the story forward? Vivek Shraya strikes an elegant balance of “showing” and “telling” in her compelling photo narrative, “ Trisha .”

2. The Concrete Essay

This form is the next evolution of concrete poetry (A.K.A. shape or pattern poems), reincarnated as CNF. Jennifer Wortman’s “ Worst-Case Scenario ” presents the story of her husband’s 35-feet fall into a gap while rock climbing, visually – via text shaped like the rocks he fell through.

3. The Illustrated Essay

There’s something so charming about a notebook doodle – perhaps because sketches convey the character of the artist in such an immediate way. I love the narrator’s personality as it comes through Randon Billings’ Noble’s drawings in “ Accidental Notes on the Syllabus .”

4. The Graphic Essay

Check out the masters of graphic memoir – Maggie McKnight , Riad Sattouf , Alison Bechdel , Marjane Satrapi, Kristen Radtke, Nicole Georges and Ellen Forney – and understand how powerful comics can be as a medium for personal storytelling.

5. The Paper Craft Essay

If you’re wondering what to do with your stockpile of scrapbooking supplies, look no further than Erica’s Trabold’s “ Swedish Rye Bread ”– an essay constructed as a collage of typed index cards, digital scans, the pages of a vintage cookbook, and scrapbooking paper.

6. The Quilted Essay

Quilting has a long history of embodying narrative in carefully chosen patterns, colours, and symbols. Learn more about textile-based narratives in Sarah Minor’s article “ What Quilting and Embroidery Can Teach Us about Narrative Form ” and by reading her visual essay, “ Log Cabin Quilt .”

7. The Schematic Essay

The Process of Becoming Informed is a found schematic essay  published by The Diagram and credited to Michael K. Buckland of Library Services in Theory and Context,  Pergamon Press, 1983. Where might you find a visual essay just waiting to be discovered?

8. The Graphic Hermit Crab

The hermit crab essay appropriates a found text – also known as a “false document” – as a “shell” to protect the vulnerable story it contains. The textual form’s logical progression is visual, in which a found graphic is adopted as the essay’s structure. J. Robert Lennon’s “ Turnabout: A Story Game ” is a graphic hermit crab essay that can be read starting at any point, proceeding in any direction.

9. The Video Essay

Video is a natural medium for personal narrative, and John Breslund is known as a pioneer of the visual essay form. This article includes a Q and A with Bresland and his collaborator, poet and essayist, Eula Biss, with links to some of their groundbreaking work including “Ode to Every Thing.”

10. The Interactive Essay

“Hypertext is spatial in every direction, truly nonsequential—nothing follows by necessity anything else in the essay” write Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in Tell It Slant . Exemplary interactive hypertext CNF include Dinty W. Moore’s “ Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge: A Google Map Essay ,” Christine Wilks’ “ Fitting the Pattern ” and the work of Eric LeMay .

I hope this survey of the visual essay, in all its weird and wonderfully varied forms, inspires you to try a new approach to telling your stories. No matter your level of skill, experience, or talent with the visual arts, you can start including visuals in your work easily – and to great effect – incorporating images or multi-media collage.

Which visual essay format appeals to you the most? I’d love to hear which visual essays inspire your next project!

  2 comments for “ CRAFT: Let’s Get Graphic: A Look at the Visual Essay by Nicole Breit ”

  • Pingback: CRAFT: Life Writing Tips— How Asking Questions Can Spark New Stories by Nicole Breit | Hippocampus Magazine - Memorable Creative Nonfiction
  • Pingback: CRAFT: Visual CNF Forms- A Look at the Concrete Essay by Nicole Breit | Hippocampus Magazine - Memorable Creative Nonfiction

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digital graphic essay examples

Form, Function, & Style in the Graphic Essay

Julia Alekseyeva | University of Pennsylvania Posted 1 May 2020

digital graphic essay examples

Dr. Julia Alekseyeva is Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching in the English Department and the Cinema and Media Studies Program. Her work analyzes the ties between radical leftist politics and global media, including film, television, comics, and digital media. Her research engages with the question of subjectivity and aesthetics within non-fiction and documentary forms. Alongside her academic career she is also an author-illustrator; her debut work, the nonfiction graphic novel Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution (Microcosm 2017), won the Virginia Library Association diversity award. She is currently working on two book-length projects: a text-based monograph titled Between Truth and Beauty: Global Semi-Documentary in the 1960s , which primarily analyzes French and Japanese documentary films, and a yet-untitled collection of graphic essays on literary, artistic, and cultural studies.

Recommended citation:

Alekseyeva, Julia. “Form, Function, & Style in the Graphic Essay.” Sequentials , vol. 1, no. 4, 2020.

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10 Digital Storytelling Examples (And Techniques to Try)

October 14, 2022

Words by Jeff Cardello

Digital storytelling enables journalists, publishers, and content marketers to craft visually compelling stories for the web.

The web has transformed the way the world tells stories. The rapid advance of interactive design techniques and tools has opened up new avenues of creative expression that let storytellers bring narratives to life. Today, digital stories don’t have to be static, linear affairs made up of fixed text and image blocks—they don’t even have to follow a traditional vertical experience.

While there’s a multitude of digital storytelling examples out there to explore, we’ve curated a small selection to highlight the sheer versatility of design techniques you can play with to tell engrossing, memorable stories on the web.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Following the shift from print to digital media from the late ‘90s, digital storytelling quickly established itself as one of the most powerful and influential ways to tell a story. At its simplest, it allows storytellers to break free from traditional media to leverage visually dynamic digital elements—including video, illustrations, 3D objects, and animations—which allow audiences to experience and interact with stories.

Today, digital storytelling is a staple for modern journalism—from illustrated features and animated reports, through to cinematic long-form web editorials . Increasingly, it’s also being adopted by brands and organizations looking to promote their own values, campaigns, and stories in a more engaging way.

Bottom line: digital storytelling isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s constantly evolving. As more publishers and companies move to adopt professional no-code design software , crafting immersive digital stories is now faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever.

Example Digital Storytelling Design Techniques

Just as there is no single way to tell a story, there is no “correct” way to tell a digital story. However, look a little harder at some of the web’s best digital storytelling examples and you’ll notice that there are a few design techniques and tricks that publishers use again and again. These focus on weaving text and visuals together  to create informative and captivating user experiences. Here are some of the most popular techniques to look out for:

Scrollytelling

Scrollytelling , with its elements of interactivity and motion, is the perfect medium for digital storytelling. Through scroll-triggered visual and text effects, animations, audio, graphics, and a careful pacing of content, scrollytelling produces engrossing cinematic narratives. Many of the digital storytelling examples we’ll cover below use this technique throughout their designs, and some even take scrollytelling in a whole new direction using horizontal scrolling .

Animation brings instant magic to digital stories—sliding text into place, spinning images across the screen, pulsating graphic design elements, and causing elements to scale, materialize, and disappear. All this movement is great for attracting readers’ attention, making it a great technique for highlighting key points and keeping people engaged.

Most digital storytelling examples feature micro-interactions and other interactive elements. Interactions like clickable show/hide elements, hover effects, scroll-triggered animations, and other user-initiated actions let visitors explore at their own pace and even provide feedback. Interactivity  is a brilliant way to immerse your audience in your story by making them actively participate in it.

Used sensitively, sound can bring a rich new sensory dimension to stories. It’s particularly useful for providing feedback when visitors complete a micro-interaction, creating ambiance with scroll-triggered sound effects, and weaving audio clips of people speaking.

So many digital storytelling examples use video—and for good reason. Video instantly creates a more dynamic user experience, and can take a variety of forms. Short clips can be used in scrollytelling and hero sections against minimalist text, longer clips can be embedded to provide more detail or tangential stories, and short vignettes can be sewn throughout to create energy and relieve text-heavy sections.

10 Digital Storytelling Examples to Inspire You

What story do you want to bring to life with rich media? Let’s dive into ten different digital storytelling examples to analyze the different techniques and ideas to try in your own digital content.

In this essay published by the New Zealand media outlet 1 News , the author recounts his friendship and travels with a friend who has passed on. Built with Vev, the heartfelt writing in this piece is gorgeously complemented by scroll-triggered effects including fade-ins, scrollytelling images, and parallax. All work together to create a visually rich and dynamic experience that keep you scrolling, without ever overpowering the highly personal and touching copy.

Digital storytelling is a great choice for brands looking to “gently” market their products. Spor  manages this masterfully in this example, showing off their jewelry by telling the story of an apple farmer. This design is filled with visuals that capture the artistry of Spor’s jewelry in a way that feels connected to nature.

This piece makes takes advantage of Vev’s ready-made digital storytelling components—including parallax image , embedded video, and complex animations—to produce a seamless scrolling experience.

UAID  tells the story of the Ukraine war through animated text conversations. From the very moment bombs begin dropping, we see a text exchange between two people. While this is fictionalized voyeurism, it’s based on real events. Seeing this conversation unfold as the war progresses is not only an extremely interesting way to highlight key events—it ensures attention stays focused on how those events impact the very real people caught up in the conflict. This impactful digital storytelling example showcases the emotive power of a simple text animation used in the right design setting.

Hidden Heroes

Hidden Heroes  is a space for celebrating individuals who helped advance technology that have been overlooked by historical narratives. In this digital storytelling example, screen space is maximized, yet we are not overwhelmed with too much content being squeezed into it. Even with maximalism, it’s important to leave some room for your content to breathe.

Hover effects open up new windows that provide more information about each person’s contributions to technology. This choice brings pleasing interactivity to the overall experience, while ensuring content doesn’t become too dense. Along with hover effects, scroll-triggered fade-ins and other animations lend this design a dynamic feel and guide people through its content.

Hearing Birdsong

Hearing Birdsong  takes what would otherwise be the sterile and clinical experience of testing your hearing, and turning it into an exploration of birds and the sounds they create. In this digital storytelling example, you are put at the center of the experience and walk through the woods while listening to the sounds around you. This immersive digital story is filled with animation and sound, making evaluating your hearing an enjoyable and rewarding journey.

Yuri Gargarin

This digital storytelling example tells the story of Yuri Gargarin , the first Soviet cosmonaut. Along with writing that describes his launch into space, there are a multitude of eye-catching visuals that activate when you scroll. As you read about Yuri’s mission, you’ll see an animation depicting the different stages of his rocket in flight. This not only conveys information about how the rocket worked but adds a sense of zero-gravity weightlessness to the design. You’ll also encounter text animations , parallax scroll effects, and plenty of other cosmic-themed visuals that make this an action-packed and fun user experience.

Service Now

This sustainability report  by Service Now was built with Vev and is a prime digital storytelling example using some of our favorite Vev features.

The content features snappy scroll-triggered animations throughout. One section of the report utilizes a horizontal sliding block of text where experts weigh in on data privacy, with each speech bubble sliding in as you scroll. This gives you a bit of a pause between sections, as well as giving focus to each new block of content that moves into place.

Animated charts  are also used to incorporate data into the story being told. Using Vev’s animated chart element, the charts fade in and grow as you scroll down the page, slowly drip-feeding key parts of the story being told.

This is another one of the digital storytelling examples we came across that does an excellent job of using animations and effects in bringing attention to its content.

Not every story has to have a clear written narrative. This digital storytelling example from Nel Mentre  just uses sound and visuals—as opposed to loads of text—to show how their scented candles can be used.

Every room in this design captures a mood. Accompanying these spaces are ASMR-inspired sounds, like the flipping of cards or the turning of pages in a book. Each begins with a delightful crack and burst of flame as a match lights a candle. This design is all about experience—communicating the atmosphere and care that makes their product.

Nattog Oslo Bergen Sov

Wonder what it’s like to take the night train from Oslo? This  digital storytelling example built in Vev has you sorted. Combining embedded videos and video background sections, scrollytelling, static photos, and animated text, this long-form advertorial is a feast for the senses. Half-photo diary, half journal entry, this digital experience invites readers on board to journey directly alongside the writer.

With colorful three-dimensional animations and a scattering of sparkling stars, this digital storytelling example from Seen  feels like being teleported to a different universe. It tells the stories of different creatives with plenty of brilliant visuals and motion.

The left-hand side of the screen displays a menu of different people. Clicking each individual link shifts the stars, shapes, and colors of the background into a new screen—a dazzling interaction that cleverly signals movement to a new page of content. From here, animated speech bubbles reveal interviews with these featured creatives, in a flourish that is far more interesting than text only.

Create Your Own Digital Stories with Vev

Ready to bring your stories to life with slick visuals, interactions, and animations? Check out Vev! Our extensive library of pre-coded digital storytelling design elements—spanning scrollytelling, advanced animations, video sections, horizontal scroll, and even 3D objects—lets you create immersive digital stories without needing a developer. Publish your story on the web when you’re ready, or embed it into your existing CMS.

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digital graphic essay examples

The Photo Essay

About the Genre:

A photo essay is a collection of images that work together to tell a story. As we’ve seen, while photos are often considered incapable of lying because they “quote” from reality rather than altering it, pictures by themselves in isolation (both in time and space) are also often ambiguous and necessarily incomplete. Over time, the subjects of photos become distant and alien to their viewers. John Berger suggests that by creating stories with pictures, we can remedy such ambiguity and alienation by re-creating a “living context” that establishes a field of meaning that makes the photos come to life.

Unlike typical stories (say a written, oral, or video story), however, photo essays can’t provide continuous, seamless narrative meaning, since they are composed of single and “frozen” snapshots.  Therefore, the connections between images are always to a certain degree jarring and surprising. It is your job in this photo essay to compose a story that capitalizes on such surprise by helping the viewer see and build connections between your images. Together, they should contribute to a complex web of meaning that stimulates reflection on your topic and shows the things presented in a new and revealing light.  

S. Byttebier, PhD/Senior Lecturer

The Shot List  (ppt)

Photo essay storyboard

Handout on Captions and Cutlines

Handout on the Photo Essay Introduction

Student Example #1 “London in Color”

Student Example #2  “London: The Isolation of Rich and Poor”

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  • / Turning an Essay into an Infographic

Turning an Essay into an Infographic

 Remediation can be surprising

Remediation is the process of presenting material from one form in another form, such as recording a podcast that narrates the ideas and information from a photo. 

There are infinite ways that remediation can transform one work into another, so for the purposes of clarity, this resource will focus on turning a written text-based essay into a audio-visual product of an infographic.  

Before you jump into creating a new infographic form of your written essay, you need to make plans.  These plans should start with an understanding of what you are being asked to create using what you already have. 

Here are a few questions to consider:

  • What were the main ideas of your essay?  What will they be for your infographic?
  • How did the written format help you to express your ideas?  How will the infographic help you?
  • How did the written format challenge the expression of your ideas?  How will the infographic format challenge you?
  • What thoughts and feelings did you intend your writing to elicit from your readers?  What thoughts and feelings do you want to elicit from your viewers?
A picture is worth a thousand words...

Visual Literacy  

As you work to answer the above questions, you may find yourself wondering how to express your written ideas in a visual format.  Explore the resources linked on our Visual Literacy support page .

Here are some important parts of the Design stage:

  • Outlining - Creating an outline of the topics and ideas that you want to express in your infographic.  
  • Read about outlining your infographic (Venngage)  
  • Designing your infographic - Steps 1-4 of the website linked below by infographic maker Venngage details the design process and offers many examples
  • How to make an infographic in 5 steps (Venngage)
  • Venngage infographic maker

The design process also includes bringing in materials from other sources.  The internet provides access to millions of images, icons, and other resources for your infographic.  Depending on your assignment requirements, you may be allowed or required to use these materials.  Knowing where to find them, as well as the legal and ethical guidelines to using them is vital.  

Learn about copyright, licensing, and usage of other creators' works.

The creation process for your infographic can start like the above image with a pencil to paper.  It can also start at one of the software apps or websites that you can use to create an infographic.  Your software tool can be as simple as PowerPoint or as advanced as Adobe InDesign.  You can start with a blank canvas or use one of the many templates available from the web.  

Keep the Digital Media Suite's resources and tutoring services in mind as you are creating your infographic.  We are available to provide support with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of programs, as well as offer advice and support as you design and create.

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TeachThought

21 Creative Digital Essays You Can Use In Your Classroom

With digital essays, learners can express ideas and reinforce details by having control over the “camera” and where the readers eyes go.

A Collection Of Creative Digital Essays You Can Use In Your Classroom

Prezi is not new, and by now you’ve heard about it and have already decided whether or not you like it. (Of course when you say you don’t like it, you mean you don’t think it’s an effective learning tool, right?)

The draw is simple enough: novel presentations that tell stories or relay arguments and ideas. It is marketed as the “non-PowerPoint”–the software that allows you to “jazz up” presentations (while making you seasick in the process).

But focusing on its novelty misses the power of a digital essay: multimodal (and multimedia), non-linear narrative and argument sequences that can support text, images, voiceovers, YouTube videos, music and more while using the background and pathways themselves as layers of additional meaning. Learners can express ideas, then reinforce select details, a thesis, or even a narrative event by having free control over the “camera” and where the readers eyes go. This can be very, very powerful if done correctly.

As Simple Or Complex As You’d Like

Digital essays on prezi can be used as very simply–to copy/paste typed pencil/paper essays, or in far more creative and interesting ways.

To show what’s possible, I’ve gathered up 21 of the more interesting (and academic-focused) presentations so that you can have a look-see. You can use them in your classroom for their content, or use them as models for students to see what’s possible.

Note that even with the digital essays below, each are interesting for different reasons, but even many of these are guilty of the occasional gratuitous zoom and spin.  But before you hate prezi for this, realize that just because others abuse the spin  and zoom doesn’t mean your students have to. Let them know ahead of time–no gratuitousness , unnecessary spinning  or zooming; give a badge to the student that shows the most restraint here, they’ll figure it out.

They’re all embedded below–hopefully it doesn’t crash your browser.

21 Amazing Digital Essays You Can Use In Your Classroom

1. Reimagining Public Education

2. Social Media 101

3. Digital Portfolios

4. Heart of Darkness

5. Prezi & Mobile Learning

6. Plot Diagramming

7.  How Prezi Works

8. Syria: The Basics

9. 30 Things About Me: A Personal Essay

10. Martin Luther King, Jr.

11. Android 101

12. A Visual Overview Of Typography

13. Artificial Intelligence

14. The Destruction Of Non-Linear Learning

15. Sensation & Perception

16. What Is A Prezi?

17. Cyberbullying

18. The Theory Of Relativity

19. From Assignment To Research

20. Everything That Rises Must Converge

21. Operations With Fractions

Bonus : This is a rambling, opinion-based but thorough look at the intersection between population growth, culture, and public education I wrote last year. It’s very long. Brownie points if you make it all the way through.

Founder & Director of TeachThought

Using Graphic Organizers for Writing Essays, Summaries and Research

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Ask any student – essay writing is one of the most despised tasks of their educational career. Perhaps there is so much displeasure associated with the task because it’s perceived as too linear – there isn’t enough visual and creative appeal. But if you use graphic organizer for writing essays then you can make writing enjoyable – or at least less terrible.

Not only enjoyable but graphic organizers (or diagrams) can make the writing process a snap. They’ll help you think outside the box, draw conclusions you wouldn’t normally observe, and make the entire process faster and more efficient.

Why Use Graphic Organizers for Writing

The phrase “graphic organizer” is just a fancy way of saying “diagram” or “visual aid.” Basically, they are a visual representation of the information you’ve acquired in the research process. There are quite a few reasons why you should use them when writing essays or summaries.

  • Helps you visualize your research and how elements connect with each other
  • Enhance your essays, summaries and research papers with visual elements
  • Track correlations between your thoughts, observations, facts or general ideas

When it comes to essay writing, the most common graphic organizers are webs, mind maps, and concept maps .

Using Webs for Brainstorming

Webbing is a great way to see how various topics are interrelated. This graphic organizer is particularly useful during the brainstorming step of the writing process.

A web can sometimes get a bit messy. Usually, there are lots of arrows to connect overlapping ideas. However, even with lines crisscrossing every which way, it is still a great way to visualize your thoughts. If you’re using an online diagramming software like Creately you can overcome some of this because we automatically arrange the object for you.

Once you’ve created a map to document all your ideas and establish connections, you can easily transition to other forms of diagramming to better organize the information.

For example if you’re writing a research paper about the food web of the Australian bushes you can start creating a food web diagram similar to the one below. This way you can easily visualize the web while writing the paper. This is a simple example but graphic organizers become even more important when the subject gets complex.

Food Web - Graphic Organizers for Writing

Although simple this example shows the importance of using graphic organizers for writing summaries. A comprehensive diagram pretty much does the summation for you.

Using Mind Maps as Graphic Organizers

Mind maps are a great way to depict a hierarchy. What is hierarchical organization ? The concept is simple: a singular topic dominates with each subsequent idea decreasing in importance.

Usually, the mind map starts with the thesis (or main idea) at the center.  From there, you can branch out with your supporting evidence.

Use this process to replace your traditional note taking technique – note cards, outlines, whatever. You’ll quickly realize a mind map is a great way to formulate the structure of your essay. The thing to note here is that the nature of the mind maps force you think about sub topics and how to organize your ideas. And once the ideas are organized writing the essay become very easy.

A mind map is a useful graphic organizer for writing - Graphic Organizers for Writing

Above is a mind map of a research proposal. Click on it to see the full image or you can see the fully editable template via this link . As you can see in this mind map the difference areas of the research proposal is highlighted. Similarly when your writing the research paper you can use a mind map to break it down to sub topics. We have more mind map templates for you to get started.

Concept Maps

A concept map will help you visualize the connection between ideas. You can easily see cause and effect – how one concept leads to another. Often times, concept mapping includes the use of short words or phrases to depict the budding relationship between these concepts.

If you look closely you can see that its very similar to a mind map. But a concept maps gives more of a free reign compares to the rigid topic structure of a mind map. I’d say it’s the perfect graphic organizer for writing research papers where you have the license to explore.

By creating a concept map , you can also see how a broad subject can be narrowed down into specific ideas.  This is a great way to counter writers block.  Often, we look at the big picture and fail to see the specifics that lead to it.  Identifying contributing factors and supporting evidence is difficult. But with a concept map, you can easily see how the smaller parts add up to the whole.

Concept map as a graphic organizer - Graphic Organizers for Writing

Why Bother With Graphic Organizers?

If you already detest the writing process, adding another step might seem insane. However, there really are several advantages of using them.  If you haven’t already accepted the benefits of each individual diagram style, here are some more perks of graphic organizers in general:

  • Quality essays are based on detail. No one is going to accept your opinions and reasoning just because you say so. You’ll need proof. And organizing that proof will require attention to detail. Graphic organizers can help you see that detail and how it contributes to the overall concept.
  • Graphic organizers are flexible. You don’t need one of those giant pink erasers. You don’t need to restructure your outline. All you have to do is draw a few arrows and bam – the relationship has totally changed.
  • No matter what you are writing about, a graphic organizer can help. They can be used to structure an essay on the Great Wall, theoretical physics, or Spanish speaking countries.
  • If you write an outline, can you easily see how point A influences point X? Probably not. But if little thought bubble A is sitting out there all by itself, you can visualize the way it ties into point R, T and X.
  • Some of us find it difficult to put our opinions, thoughts, and ideas into writing. However, communicating our feelings with little doodles and sketches is far less threatening.
  • As a writer, our brain often feels like a 2-year-old’s toy box – a big jumbled mess. Taking that mess and putting it onto paper with some semblance of organization is challenging. Rather than trying to take your thoughts from total chaos to a perfectly structured list, just try to get them out of your brain and onto paper in the form of a diagram.
  • A graphic organizer helps you establish validity and relevance. You can easily nix the ideas that don’t support or enhance your thesis.

The next time you are faced with a writing project, take a few minutes to explore the efficiency of graphic organizers. You can find a wealth of templates here.

Have you ever used a graphic organizer to structure an essay? How did it go? Do you have a diagram suggestion for the writing process that wasn’t mentioned here? Let us know!

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

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Comparison and Contrast Guide

Comparison and Contrast Guide

About this Interactive

Related resources.

This interactive guide provides an introduction to the basic characteristics and resources that are typically used when students compose comparison and contrast essays. The Comparison and Contrast Guide includes an overview, definitions and examples. The Organizing a Paper section includes details on whole-to-whole (block), point-by-point, and similarities-to-differences structures. In addition, the Guide explains how graphic organizers are used for comparison and contrast, provides tips for using transitions between ideas in comparison and contrast essays, and includes a checklist, which matches an accompanying rubric .

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