Ben Saunders: North 3
We’re just finishing off work on a very exciting website for polar explorer Ben Saunders, who’s just left the UK for Canada to embark on a North Pole speed record attempt. Ben originally contacted us back in June, saying “I’m looking for a design agency to help with a few slightly unusual web and print projects.” Needless to say, when Ben went on to explain that he intended to walk nearly 500 miles solo to the North Pole in just 36 days we were eager to get involved.
Following an identity project and exhibition graphics we produced for Ben in collaboration with Studio8 Design in November, we set about creating a site that would enable people to follow the expedition over the course of 6 weeks. The first issue to tackle was the fact that due to the extreme latitudes it’s impossible to get high bandwidth connections from the poles, since the satellites are geo-stationery around the equator: the further North you go, the weaker the signal. So live daily webchats and glorious photography were out. We needed to build the site around data that could easily be sent back at the expense of a few kilobytes of bandwidth.
The final site with all the live data and infographics (pictured above with dummy data) will launch on or around Tuesday 15th March, when Ben sets off. Ben’s GPS co-ordinates will be sent back every hour along with distance travelled per hour – posted live on the site and to Ben’s Twitter page. A live countdown clock will display the time remaining, and a cumulative graph of daily stats (latitude, distance travelled, sled weight and temperature) will show Ben’s progress. Ben will also send a post back at the end of each day, with an image.
The new site went live yesterday (less the forthcoming live data-rich homepage above), featuring a video by Temujin Doran.
Comments
UPDATE: Ben’s expedition manager Andy Ward emailed us this morning to say “sadly the weather window closed out on us this morning at about 5am and with zero visibility at the drop off point there is no chance of flying today. So the drop off will be put back 24hrs. Good news is that tomorrow’s weather pattern is looking much more favourable so it’s a short term thing.” So fingers crossed we’ll flick the switch on the full website on Wednesday 16th March.
Joe Sharpe · 15th March 2011 · 9:23 pm
UPDATE: Unfortunately Ben has continued to experience delays in setting off and his window for the expedition will unfortunately close for the year this Wednesday (23rd March). We’re keeping our fingers crossed for him. In the meantime they’ve continued to upload some amazing videos to the blog documenting their time in Resolute Bay, Canada – well worth a look.
Joe Sharpe · 21st March 2011 · 6:02 pm