How to make an awful ArcGIS StoryMap
Eight indispensible tips for lousy storytelling
It takes hard work to tell a good story.
But relax! It's so much easier to throw together a mediocre — or, better yet — a truly awful place-based narrative.
Here's how to create a lousy story using ArcGIS StoryMaps — in 8 easy steps!
Step 1: Create a really dull cover.
...including a really dull title, like this:
Choose a title that's as uninteresting as you can make it. You've done pretty well with this one! Here's why:
- It tells us it's a story map. Why? Did da Vinci call his masterpiece, "Painting of Mona Lisa"? No, but that shouldn't stop you.
- It's a label. No active verbs, no evocative adjectives, nothing that makes us want to read the story. Just...a label.
- It tells us it's about Springfield, but gives us no clue which Springfield we're talking about. According to the USGS, there are 33 Springfields in the United States. But who cares? They're probably all alike.
Choose a really boring cover image.
Brilliant! You've found a photo that reveals little or nothing about your story. It's not evocative or attractive. It contains no people. It gives no clue about where the image was made. Good work!
Maybe you can do even worse...
Oh, yeah, now you're cooking! Find an image of the backs of people's heads. Put the title right on top of the photo's center of interest (if it has one). Use an acronym that your audience may or may not understand. And make your capitalization inconsistent.
Step 2. Use garish colors.
We've given you the option of creating custom themes. What a great opportunity! Now you can go hog-wild with clashing, migraine-inducing hues that would make Martha Stewart faint dead away. Like the nausea-inducing palette of this story (it's a theme I've proudly named "Butt Ugly")? C'mon, you can do even better—er, worse. Whatever.
Taste and aesthetic propriety are overrated virtues...now is the time to let it hang out—all over the spectrum.
Step 3. Write some really dull text.
You should go straight into a flavorless description. Don't worry about composing a lead paragraph that summarizes the story and draws your readers into the narrative. Who cares? They probably won't bother to read the story map anyway. They'll just be looking at dull images and incomprehensible maps.
Next, make sure your text is REALLY long.
That's right, as long as you want, and then some! Don't be concerned about breaking up your text with interesting visuals. Disregard the fact that the web is a less-than-ideal medium for reading long text passages, and that most of your readers will lose interest and click away.
Step 4: Add a bad map.
You're doing great! This map meets so many of the bad map criteria:
- It loads slowly.
- It gives the reader no clue as to where we are.
- It has a busy background, atop which you've added way too many busy map icons.
- It doesn't have a legend. Who reads those things anyway?
- It uses every color in the rainbow and then some. Why stick to a "limited palette"? Bo-ring!
Best of all, it has that truly distinctive element of bad web maps: unconfigured popups! Clicking on an item rewards your readers with gems like "OBJECTID" and "DIST_NM"—which is exactly what your broad, non-technical audience is looking for.
Step 5. Use every text trick in the book.
It's really fun to mix together all sorts of formats.
You can quote yourself at length. You know how everyone loves to hear you pontificate.
You can put subheadings right next to...
- That in turn are right next to
- bulleted lists that don't really need to be
- bulleted lists
- But you love making tedious presentations and so why not emulate Death by PowerPoint
Oh, and don't forget to paste in full URLs to websites, like this: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/429bc4eed5f145109e603c9711a33407
...when you could have added a link to a text passage . Who wants to bother with that?
Step 6. Mix and match charts and graphs to your heart's content.
There are so many complex and confusing info-graphics out there that are just begging to be abused. Feel free to grab them and throw them in!
Don't worry about whether their background hue doesn't match the style of your story map. Fear not that labels may be too small to read, colors inconsistent, context missing. There's no such thing as too much information!
Oh, you're worried about citing the sources for these graphics? C'mon, relax, it's the internet! Everyone will believe them anyway.
Step 7. Screw up your photos.
Make sure you put photos in a sidecar section without bothering to hit that little gear icon and choosing the "fit" option or adjusting the focal point!
Of course the easiest way to screw up your photos is simply to choose really bad images. Boring topics, tilted camera, bad exposures, lousy focus—all of these are great ways to make your photos as meaningless and irritating as possible.
Feel free to add gratuitous visuals, simply because you can. Everything but the kitchen sink, right? Maybe even the kitchen sink, with a cat in it.
And don't forget to...
use rights-restricted photos!
There are so many gorgeous images out there that are copyrighted. What the heck, go for it! You're lonely anyway, why not get a few nice letters from lawyers? It's a great way to populate your in-box.
That's it! Now get on out there and make bad story maps!
Oh, you noticed that we promised eight steps and there are only seven? Shame on you for actually paying attention. That's the key to making good story maps.
If you're one of those people, then this might interest you:
So the thumbnail only shows a "1"? Who cares?
