Patagonia’s “dam” good map
The outdoor brand launches its Discover the Blue Heart story map
By: Erin Quinn
Patagonia just launched The Blue Heart of Europe storytelling map, part of their Dam Truth campaign to protect the rivers of the Balkans from hydroelectric damming. Patagonia’s digital team built this “scrollytelling” visualization using a custom-designed map (styled with Studio), and code examples from the GL JS library so readers fly to a location based on scroll position.
The Blue Heart story map is the type of visualization that makes you want to buy a bigger monitor. The map style itself is gorgeous — we’re loving the crisp look of the terrain hillshading combined with the data overlays representing existing, in-progress, and proposed dams. The map’s subdued design lets you focus on embedded drone footage — you get the bird’s eye view of the landscape and can tangibly connect to a region you may not know much about. Smooth transitions from geography-to-geography provide critical context to the nature photography and activist interviews captured by the Patagonia team.
To get started on your own story map read through our story map scroll example or follow the guide to styling custom terrain in Studio to achieve a similar effect.
