How To Cascade: Map Legends

Legends in Story Maps; story maps with legends. Hmmm...this can be a puzzle.

There are a few ways to annotate your map in a way that help to balance A) the transfer of glorious map information into your readers' brains, with B) the fact that you are telling them a story.

Here are three techniques to consider for your richly appointed storytelling...

Apply map colors directly into your story text.

Use contextual graphics to de-code your map.

Reveal map content progressively.

While a Cascade story map doesn't yet support the direct inclusion of dynamic legends for your web maps (the other templates do), often stories are better without the typical legend a static map might have. We'll walk through how these three techniques can be used to annotate a complex map for your readers, without lobbing a decoder ring at them.

Conveniently, we can use the recent hamster zombie outbreak as our example.

Check out this kitchen sink of a map. It explains everything...

There's a lot going on here. If we were to toss this map into the story with a great big legend, we would expect the readers to have to stop in their tracks and take efforts to de-code all of the layers, and their symbols and colors, on their own (assuming they were so inclined), relying on leaky short-term memory and a not-so-hot cognitive ability to accurately differentiate colors, as their eyes dart between the map and the symbol key. But this isn't a map delivery device, it's a story!

A legend is just a stand-in for an author who can't be there. The beauty of a story map is that you are there, via your narrative, and you get to unfold your maps personally... 

If your Immersive section has a lot of views (the section you just scrolled through had six views), it's a good idea to pop up for air, to reestablish the topic of your narrative and avoid fatiguing your readers. Ever notice how indoor sitcoms always show a wide outside view between scenes? Same reason! It's called an "establishing shot."

So while we were feeling understandably grim about the seemingly inevitable collapse of civilization, there is good news to communicate...

Ultimately, the zombie outbreak was fully suppressed thanks to spatially aware containment teams, and the progressive presentation of meaningful, bite-sized nuggets of map information, revealed and annotated within a narrative. I fear that if information-dense maps with long legends were used, the response would have been too slow and less motivating. And who knows what sort of zombie hamster-riddled world we would be living in now. 

So have fun breaking out your map content into slices of meaning! Also, this non-legend approach can be used for other story map apps, like Map Journal -not just Cascade. If you are telling a story, and the best stories have maps, don't let a legend steal all the fun.

Here's a re-cap of the three methods used to key a map within a narrative context:

Apply map colors directly into your story text.

Use contextual graphics to de-code your map.

Reveal map content progressively.

Cheers, John

P.S. Want to learn more about the post-apocalyptic rebuilding effort? You might also learn about including media into Cascade stories.