In 2015, Shorthand has grown up.
And it's not just us that’s growing, our community is too. Publishers were quick to jump on board when Shorthand first launched, but now we’re seeing plenty of brands, non-profits, and others getting in on the act too.
This expansion of our core user group, in addition to the ongoing development of the platform, mean we’ve seen some interesting trends emerging in the way people are experimenting with Shorthand to tell interactive visual stories online.
So as Shorthand celebrates its second anniversary, we took a look back at some of most innovative and engaging stories published with the platform over the last year.
MORE THAN WORDS
1) While longform shows no sign of losing popularity, we've seen a rise in the number of shorter stories created with Shorthand. The Liverpool Echo’s 'Thank you' – an open letter from Steven Gerrard as he prepared to leave the Reds – is less than 700 words long, but makes a huge impact with rich images and autoplay video.
2) Sometimes, pictures speak louder than words. In ABC's Mr Veli, text and photographs stand shoulder-to-shoulder to tell an engaging story, making the most of Shorthand’s Background Scrollmation and Text Over Media sections to display beautiful, full-width images.
3) ...and sometimes, you can do away with words altogether. Father’s Days, by The Telegraph, is a great example of Shorthand being used as a video player, ensuring a distraction-free focus and a fully-responsive format.
AMAZING INTERACTIVES
4) Interactivity has always been a key feature of Shorthand, and since we enabled our Reveal effect on mobile and introduced new Scrollmation features for mobile, there's now even more opportunities for simple tricks that will engage and delight readers.
In Shorthand Pro, the Background Scrollmation section type has been used to create animations to great effect, as seen in LG's Let the Music in.
5) Scrollmation can also be used to bring charts and data to life, as in this Two Column Scrollmation example from The Knowledge Society, State of Mind.
6) And, of course, we've seen plenty of creative uses of Shorthand's Reveal effect. Produced by two or more Text Over Media sections in succession, it is available in both the Pro and Social versions of Shorthand.
A recent example is seen in the BBC's The Mochileros, which uses Reveal to add layer to a map showing coca cultivation in the high Andes and the routes of the 'mochileros' – backpackers risking their lives in "cocaine valley".
7) Maries Stopes International also used a series of Reveal effects to create a cartoon storyboard in 'We go to where they are', which covers the NGO's outreach programme in Tanzania.
MULTI-STORY PROJECTS
8) Occasionally, publishers are using Shorthand to create collections of immersive stories, with a single Shorthand story as a hub page.
In Every hill got a story by NITV, which encompasses 18 chapters, Text Over Media sections are used in addition to a nav menu to seamlessly direct readers to three other Shorthand stories, containing six chapters each.
9) Similarly, a special project on the Atlanta BeltLine by AJC uses a Shorthand story to bring together 14 different stories covering everything from the BeltLine's history to its current status as a mecca for art, business, and community.
NEWS
Last but not least, let's take a look at some of the biggest Shorthand news over the last year:
10) More stories: There are now 10 times as many Shorthand stories published each month than there were in January this year.
11) We won an award: The Professional Publishers Association (PPA) awarded us its Start-up of the Year prize at the recent PPA Digital Awards in London.
12) New features: We've introduced a host of new features, such as enhanced features for mobile storytelling. Reveal effect now works on mobile, and on Pro we've introduced new Scrollmation features for mobile too. In addition to the introduction of share icons on mobile, this means it's never been easier to tailor the way content is shown on smaller screens.
