Frozen Planet Interactive

Last week saw the first episode of Frozen Planet, a landmark series narrated by Sir David Attenborough. To coincide with the launch of the television series, The Open University commissioned us to design and develop an interactive that would expand on an existing print item. The interactive is split into three key interactive elements, Google Earth layers, archived video footage and a Polar Timeline:

Google Earth Layers

We utilised the Google Earth Api to display custom layers that the user could explore. These include ice cover, species settlement, migratory patterns and much much more. For example, a user can see how the world was mapped in 1790, track Emperor Penguin colonies and browse through a collection of BBC archived footage.

Interactive Polar Timeline

The user has the ability to explore the polar regions by choosing key events in history. For example a user can find out where Shackleton set off in his last quest to circumnavigate the Antarctica or exactly where and when Antarctica was first discovered.

The Final Product

We developed the interactive to be completely dynamic, therefore ensuring that the tool could be reused in the future for completely different shows and data sets. The latest version of the interactive is viewable on the Open University website