The Onion is an American fake news website which provides farcical news articles, audio clips, and video news clips in a convincing manner through the website’s design. The design of the website, audio clips, and video clips are constructed in a specific manner as to seem completely serious to the viewer. Mirroring the design of popular news media is the manner in which the illusion is constructed. From the font type through to the colours used, the website will be analysed for how the design website pages are constructed to convey certain impressions to the viewer.
The Use of Colour is an integral part of any website’s design. It lends to the feel of the website and helps the website’s users consider which type of website they are actually using. Each well travelled internet user has preconceived notions of what design a certain website should have. The Onion’s design follows this rule with its extremely basic use of colour. The background is all white, with a dark to light grey headline across the top of the screen.
(example 1)
All of the text in the website is in black, except for the headlines, which are in three different colours. The use of a separate colour for headlines is for the ease of the reader, according to Nielson (2008) “On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit”, so the use of a different coloured headline allows the reader to quickly skim the headlines and possibly spot a story they may be interested in reading.
(example 2)
The coloured headlines are generally used along with a colour photo. Colour photos also help with helping the user establish a linked story’s topic before reading, and according to Wysocki (2004) “photographs are often used to bring a sense of immediacy and ‘reality’ to a layout” (p. 132) this helps The Onion, as a fake news website, to ad a sense of reality to their pages.
One photo on The Onion’s front page is a memorial photo of one of its anchors. The colours used in the photo are so washed out that the photo is nearly monochrome, this brings a sense of tradition, respect, and history to a photo.
(example 3)
The use of a basic colour palette in a news website lends to a ‘stripped back’ or ‘bare’ feeling website. This makes the user believe that the website is honest and true, because they are not needing to hide their message behind a facade of flash software and distracting colours. Green is the only colour which reoccurs consistently throughout the front page, this gives the page an ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ feel and helps the reader to feel like that the information provided is natural and true to reality. The same colour green is also used with the website’s logo which is, unsurprisingly, an onion. Using a natural object for a logo also fits in with the natural design.
Typefaces lend a lot to the design of a website. Typefaces leave very specific imprints in the impressions that they give readers, and The Onion website’s choice of typeface is showing they are very much aware of this. The typeface running through nearly the entire website is a sans-serifs type font. According to Wysocki (2004), type designers “wanted typefaces that functioned rationally, like machines.” (p. 129). Therefore, a sans-serif typeface is the most obvious choice for a website that wants to leave an impression of being streamline and up-to-date.
(example 4)
Within the front page’s memorial photo are the words “Brandon Armstrong - in Memoriam” in a Roman typeface. Roman typefaces are designed to leave an impression of tradition, age, maturity and strength upon the reader. And along with the words inside the photo all being in capitals, the main impression is one of strength. The use of this font is in direct contrast to the sans-serif typeface used within the rest of the website and that’s because the impression it is trying to leave the opposite impression to the main typeface.
(example 5)
In conclusion The Onion website is a great example of a website that uses its design very deliberately to force an impression upon the reader. Even though its stories are obviously false, its design is so well thought out that in many cases it tricks people into believing it is a real news website. It does this through using designs generally only seen on news websites. Basic colour palate, small blurbs of text that is easy to skim-read and photos that are can be used to gain an insight into a story’s topic without even having to read the article. The website’s largest downfall is the amount of advertising. A lot of the advertising is a lot more colourful than the actual website, and so is often distracting. Especially in a website where the visuals are meant to take a backseat to the articles, but none the less, the website is designed well enough to draw your eye in to the stories.
