The goal of THIS IS HOME is to provide a vivid, immersive experience for the reader that combines the best of long-form journalism with strong multimedia storytelling. The result is a digital digest that focuses on food and sport -- two key areas in which people define themselves and find community.
The backbone of the app is two chapters of long-form narrative text that mixes elements of personal essay with in-depth reporting. This is supplemented by video and audio profiles covering a range of topics and personalities, from a former Olympic boxer to a New Orleans restaurateur. There are also interactive features, like slideshows and touch-graphics, that provide the reader with the data they need to better understand the ways America and its cities are changing. By providing the reader with a variety of stories and platforms in which to engage with them, the reader becomes an active participant in these stories. THIS IS HOME takes us through different cities, different neighborhoods, and different lives — so we can better understand who we are, how we are changing, and what we may become.
THIS IS HOME THIS IS HOME is divided into three distinct chapters: a foreword, a chapter on sports and a chapter on food. Each chapter is preceded by a title page, making it easy for the user to orient themselves within the app.
The introduction provides the user with an overview of the stories and the themes that will be addressed in each chapter. It begins with a video and personal narrative written by the author to share the inspiration for the project. This provides the user with context and intimacy: the latter provided by the first-person voice, and the former provided by a detailed examination of the ways home has changed in recent years.
Each chapter is broken into four distinct sections. An introduction provides a personal story, as well as context for how the topic relates to home. Subsequent sections feature long-form text pieces, short video vignettes and extended audio pieces that bring these diverse stories of home to life.
Understanding America’s demographic changes is key to framing the story of home. To help readers understand this, THIS IS HOME has interactives and infographics that guide them through some of this data, like this touch-graphic of America’s cultural generation gap.
Each chapter contains a video vignette, profiling a person who embodies the way sport or food has helped them find their place in the world.
A mix of interactives and profiles aims to make users feel more connected to their environment, and the people that surround them.
Each chapter is filled with rich images, laid out to enhance the user's visual experience. This brings the reader closer to the people, themes and events in the text.
Anne Branigin is a writer based out of Los Angeles, where she is an Annenberg Fellow currently pursuing her MS in Journalism at the University of Southern California. After receiving her BFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2006, she worked as an English language educator in Vietnam and Colombia. Ms. Branigin’s current work focuses on culture, community and identity. You can find more of her work at www.AnneBranigin.com.