Get Primed!
By:
October 28, 2014
HiLobrow friend and contributor Joe Alterio, and his equally talented colleague Tim Lillis, have recently launched a cool story-telling platform: Primer.
Primer is a text-and-visuals version of a narrative podcast or radio program. Like the most interesting podcasts and radio programs, Primer breaks up the stories it tells — so far, nonfiction histories of everything from the TV laugh track to the Moon; but they’re also planning Primers on art, science, biographies, fiction, and more — into discrete segments. Because attention spans aren’t what they used to be!
Each segment of a Primer visual narrative is illustrated with a drawing (Joe and Tim are both artists and illustrators), animated gif, or photo. Some of the images slide along the screen in lockstep with the text; others appear, peek-a-boo-style, in the background.
What’s particularly fun about this format is the conversation, in each Primer, between the images and the text. “An entirely separate story, contradictory or supplemental, can happen in the sub rosa space of the piece,” Joe told me recently — in an email rejecting a couple of ideas for Primers I want to write.
A new Primer is planned for each Friday, going forward. Subscribe now!