Splash · an open skill pack for newsrooms

Powerful stories aren’t read.
They’re seen.

Splash teaches the AI your newsroom already has to build the maps, charts and motion graphics that used to need a visual desk. This page is the pitch and the proof — every figure on it works the way Splash works.

A chart story, told by scrolling

The case for going visual, in three figures

Fig. 1 Pew Research Center, 2024
01 · The shift

The audience moved to visual platforms.

The share of U.S. adults who regularly get news on TikTok rose from 3% in 2020 to 17% in 2024 — nearly six-fold in four years. Attention now goes to what can be seen.

Source: Pew Research Center, 2024
02 · The proof

When a story goes visual, readers stay.

“Snow Fall”, the New York Times’ pioneering scrollytelling story, drew 3.5 million page views in its first six days — and readers stayed with it for around 12 minutes. An eternity online.

Source: The New York Times, on “Snow Fall”, 2012
03 · The catch

That kind of story took a six-role desk.

Journalist, data scientist, designer, front-end developer, motion designer, cartographer. The FT, NYT and Reuters staff them all. Most newsrooms can staff one.

04 · The turn

Splash is that desk, as an open skill pack.

Four formats, one pipeline, driven by the AI your newsroom already pays for — open source, ready for any CMS. And this figure is live: run your cursor over the map.

Fig. 3 Rendered by code — Cesium + Remotion, no screen recording

3D Terrain Flythrough

Explore the skill →
Fig. 4 MapTiler + Remotion

2D Map Explainer

Explore the skill →

Fig. 2 · drawn live from Natural Earth + OpenStreetMap data — no screenshots

01 · Place

Start a continent wide.

A story map opens where the reader’s mental map is — then carries them, one scroll at a time, to the exact valley where the story lives.

02 · Path

One river runs from Tibet to the sea.

The Yarlung Tsangpo leaves the Himalayan plateau, bends through the deepest canyon on Earth, and becomes the Brahmaputra. Its line draws itself as you scroll.

River line: OpenStreetMap, routed source → delta
03 · Stakes

Three countries share one river.

China upstream, India midstream, Bangladesh at the delta — each lights up the moment the river reaches it. Order is the story.

04 · Scale

A basin of well over 100 million people.

Downstream, the river fans into the delta that much of Bangladesh lives on. What happens upstream is never only upstream’s business.

05 · Explore

Now it’s yours — move your cursor.

The same map, switched to interactive: hover the countries. Scrolly map and explorable map are two outputs of the same skill.

06 · Motion

Some beats need motion.

The gorge where this river bends is the deepest canyon on Earth — a scroll can’t fly you through it, but a render can. Deterministic, frame-exact, no screen recording.

07 · Motion

…and the same map, cut for social.

The story you just scrolled, exported as MP4 by the same skill — one pipeline, every format your desk publishes.

The shelf

Eight ways to make a splash

3D terrain flythrough still Fig. 3 · Remotion + Cesium

3D Terrain Flythrough

A slow helicopter glide over satellite-draped mountains, rendered deterministically to video.

Explore the skill → 2D map explainer still Fig. 4 · Remotion + MapTiler

2D Map Explainer

A river draws itself across the map; each country lights up as the water reaches it.

Explore the skill →
In production MapTiler

Map Scrolly

Maps that fly, reveal and annotate as the reader scrolls — like the chapter you just scrolled.
In production MapTiler

Interactive Map

Explorable geography — pan, zoom, layered markers — embeddable in any article.
In production Observable Plot

Custom Graphic

Bespoke charts with an annotation ladder — the number first, then the why, scroll-driven when the story needs it.
In production Datawrapper

Datawrapper Embed

When the house chart tool is the right tool — briefed, built and embedded by the agent.
In production Scroll-driven

Image Scrolly

Photo and satellite sequences that advance with the reader — evidence, one frame at a time.
In production Remotion

Storytelling Video

Animated annotations and map moves exported as MP4 — cut for social, rendered by code.

Built over

Standing on Swiss shoulders

Remotion

Video written in React — every Splash motion render is a program, replayable frame for frame, not a screen capture.

Zurich, Switzerland

MapTiler

Basemaps, satellite imagery and 3D terrain — the geography under every map beat, from dataviz-dark to quantized-mesh.

Zug, Switzerland

…in good company

Datawrapper D3.js Observable Plot CesiumJS Natural Earth OpenStreetMap

From briefing to published, in one sitting

Brief8 editorial questions Composethe agent builds Iterate“warmer palette” — done Publishan embed for any CMS
Browse the skill pages Buried Signals ↗