The Story Map

The first person who writes a program that can do a serviceable job of automating the creation of a Story Map^* is going to make a tidy sum of money. It’s a clever idea, well executed:

When my wife and I were married last year, we had a fairly small wedding with a few groups of very tightly-knit friends and family. Wanting them to chat one another up easily, we made this graphic to help start conversations and allow, say, our college friends to enjoy my wife’s father’s friends without too much awkwardness.

We also wanted a program-like document, something that would tell the roles of each member of the wedding party. (Hence my wife, Heather, and me in the middle, and the ring around us of the major players.)

We collected our favorite stories (and solicited some from our parents–at least one for each guest), and Heather distilled them all to the teaser text you see between each “node”. I then rendered the map in Illustrator and we had them printed on newsprint. My mom and my sister tied them around cardboard tubes filled with sunflower seeds (later to be thrown at us as we walked back up the aisle), and each guest received one as they took their seats.

^* View the image at the Original size to get the full effect.

[Via kottke.org]