This beautiful scrolling site was made for MSC cruises. It’s called in Chartered Waters and is best viewed with a Chrome browser. Web designers will be impressed but SEO guys will be looking down their noses and wondering why anyone bothers. Truth be told, it’s hard to run SEO on a scrolling site that has no indexed text, but when it provides as enjoyable a user experience as this one does, then it can generate organic traffic.
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps and it has a fascinating history. From the first Vikings who landed in the Americas in the 10th century to the heroic British explorer Captain James Cook who first mapped New Zealand and Australia, this interactive scrolling site shows them all. As you scroll you proceed through space and time along a timeline at the bottom and an antique-style world map showing you the location that was mapped this year.
MSC Cruises had the scrolling site designed by Epiphany. Junior Creative Designer at Epiphany Pippa Holman said this about the design:
“The style of In Charted Waters is based on an old treasure map, reflecting the historical, yet exciting, nature of the discoveries that shaped and transformed our world.
“The animation allows you to see how cartography developed from the early beginnings to the fully formed final product that we now rely on in the modern day.”
It’s a fascinating history and geography lesson presented in an entertaining way that really shows the benefits of innovative website design. Scrolling sites are more than a gimmick, used in the right way they can be the perfect format to present factual and visual information.
