Make your social posts more exciting with interactivity

For this years Tech Nation Report I wanted to make the idea of twinning cities more exciting than just…showing the twinned cities. So, I came up with the idea of creating a bit of an interactive puzzle where users could look around the map themselves and find the twins.

I found this blog post by Studio behind 90, which provided a simple guide to making a 360 scrollable image. However, it’s actually even simpler to do than what they describe.

The first step is the same - you have to download an equirectangular map. You can draw whatever you like across the middle second of the map in photoshop or illustrator, I used illustrator in this instance.

The red lines are taken from the original map, and here they show the main area people will see at eye level. When it’s finished it’ll fold up into a sphere rather than a square. Everything outside the red lines will be stretched and folded, and the centre will bulge out so I needed to squash it down and squish it in so that it would look proportional in its final form. The central big bubble is what will show when you first bring it in, so frame it up nicely.

When you’ve got your content looking right you then need to throw it into photoshop. On the top menu go to 3D > Spherical panorama > new panorama layer from selected layer(s). After you’ll move into the 3D space and be able to scroll around your sphere to see how it’s worked. You can have a look around for any mistakes, and undo your changes if you need to correct anything. You can also add other layers on top, draw on them and then merge them into the sphere, just merge your layers to add new details. I prefer to go back and forth.

As it says in the original tutorial, you’ll need to add some xmp data which they provide as a download and then it’s a simple export as a jpg and you’ve got your scrollable image.

This method of 3D only really works on Facebook, so another thing you can do is create scrollable images for instagram. You need to make sure your image can be split into squares, then send it to your phone. You can either use an app like the ones recommended in this article, or you can split it into squares yourself and use instagrams multiple image posting feature.