When ABC New York purchased seven Curious World Maps licenses for use on news programming like ABC World News Tonight, they were looking for heavy-duty map-making capacity. Traditionally a show with a large graphics content, World News Tonight needed a regular supply of customised map imagery, produced, inevitably to urgent deadlines.
“They always wanted maps on the show [News World Tonight] no matter how long it took,” as Paul Brodie, the show’s Art Director, explained, “even if it called for two artists working for three hours. Now, someone can request a fully animated map right before we go to air for a breaking story and it’ll be there.”
As Brodie realised, one of the immediate effects of installing Curious World Maps was to lighten the load on the graphics department, while making it possible for him to offer more content to the show’s editors.
“Now the two artists who would have been working long and hard for a show are freed up to do other stuff, and my department can quite confidently offer up to five maps for one show, instead of just one.”
As a leading broadcaster, ABC uses striking graphics to help establish quality production values, and for Brodie, competing to create outstanding work is part of the job. “Our view is that we’re the flagship show of ABC News, and we’re constantly looking for things like Curious World Maps to raise the quality level.”
An important quality issue for Brodie is the ability to add animation to maps. Curious World Maps allows you to animate almost every aspect of a map, and for ABC this has transformed the way they use graphics within their news coverage.
“We very rarely make a still map,”says Brodie. “There’s no reason not to make it move, because it takes so little time to animate with Curious.”
“The moment I saw Curious World Maps I realized it was exactly what I needed. It’s a flexible, user-friendly system that quickly does incredibly detailed, animated maps. As a piece of software that I can put onto a PC and get moving, it’s perfect. The way Curious animates maps is a huge step forward for us and the information we can provide to our viewers.”
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ABC World News Tonight Using colour relief, region highlight style and customised markers.
ABC World News Tonight: Political story
Using flat colouring, county highlighting and lighting.
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