Adjustable Font Size in the new ArcGIS Story Maps

[AspenN]

In the new ArcGIS Story Maps builder, there is no way to customize font size. The only way to change font sizes are to change to the preset sizes based on type of text (paragraph, heading, etc.). We are looking at putting together story maps for various presentations. With a specific organization style guide to adhere to, we need the capability to adjust the text to the sizes as indicated in the style guide. It would be helpful to be able to highlight text in any area of the story map builder (be that a sidecar, caption, guided tour, slideshow, paragraph, etc.) and adjust the font size of that highlighted text (much like the text colors and emphasis like bold or italics can be adjusted in that way). Another possibility for adjustable font sizes would be to include the option to change the preset sizes of the type of texts in the new themes builder so we could create a template to use in all presentations where the paragraph text is the size we need for paragraphs, heading text is the size we need for headings, etc.

[OwenGeo]

@MichelleMount, @AspenN, and others: Thanks for providing this feedback about font sizes.

While we do hear that many people use ArcGIS StoryMaps to create stories to use as presentations, we do not actually recommend this. ArcGIS StoryMaps is a tool that is designed to create long-form stories intended to be read by an individual person on their desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone browser. As such, it is optimized for this use case and not for presentations. There are a few significant ways that stories and presentations differ...

Stories are responsive, which means the content rearranges to fit the screen when you view it on different device sizes. This is the exact opposite of what people typically expect from a presentation. For a presentation, you want the content to scale and have the same layout and relative font/content sizes regardless of what screen you view it on.

Also, as you mentioned, the typical font sizes are very different. Fonts that are appropriate for a presentation format are way too big for someone who wants to comfortably read a story on their laptop or phone, and story fonts are often too small for presentations.

The last item I'd mention is that the primary mode of navigation for a story is vertical scrolling, which is not optimal for content that you're presenting to others. One person manually scrolling content on a large screen for others to view/read is disorienting for an audience and can often make viewers dizzy, which may not be the best way to get your point across! 😕

This being said, we understand that despite all these drawbacks, there are reasons people want to or like to use stories as presentation tools: the engaging content layouts, the ability to integrate 2D or 3D maps from your ArcGIS organization, etc.

Stay tuned as we'll have some exciting news on this front coming in the second half of this year...

[cbp-geus]

Hi @OwenGeo,

Thank you for your point of view on this.

We have been quite successful in presenting responsive ArcGIS StoryMaps to a larger audience in auditoriums on a large screens. It has been of great help because we can adapt the dynamic content, scale and display to the story we want to present. It gives a whole new dimension and way of being able to present ourGIS projects to the audience.

We don't see the vertical scrolling an issue. As a matter of fact, it gives a slow natural sliding of the presentation, even when going backwards, especially when using the Sidecar. We even had a presentation where the autoplay function worked quite well. This feature, however, could be improved a bit by allowing a specific set time duration of the autoplay.

In addition, it works really well when the audience subsequently receives a QR code for the URL to the presentation, so that they can afterwards see the Story Map presentation on their own mobile, tablet or laptop.

We are really excited for the StoryMaps and are looking forward for the upcoming news later of this year.

[MichaelAgbozo]

Yes, it will be really helpful if the new Storymap templates have adjustable/fully customizable fonts. I'm using the slate theme for a project and needing a font size much smaller than the current title font size (but bigger than the paragraph font size). If fonts are fully customizable in the next Storymap releases, it'll be very much applauded....we need hover-over tooltip too in the Storymap templates.

[OwenGeo]

> we need hover-over tooltip too in the Storymap templates.

@MichaelAgbozo - I would suggest you submit a separate idea for this request. 

Adjustable font sizes are something we are working on, so stay tuned.

[MichaelAgbozo]

Can we also have  hover-over tooltip in the Storymap templates without having to go back to creating Media Maps first, as  https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-enable-hover-popups-in-arcgis-storymaps-0000210... suggests?

@OwenGeo, thank you.  

[OwenGeo]

This feature is now available. See Blog: What's new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (January 2025) for details.

[JanetSilb_Spike]

I would also love to see capability. I have a StoryMap Collection in which the title text gets split in tablet view because I cannot adjust the font size or format the text differently.

[JanetSilb_Spike]

I'd like to kudo this idea. In my case, I need to adjust the font, or even word breaks in the Title of a StoryMap Collection for different screen sizes. It all looks great on the desktop, laptop, & mobile views, but on the tablet view one of my title words gets weirdly hyphenated and I don't have any way to adjust this. I'm using a custom theme & have adjusted font sizes & types in the theme so I think I really need to adjust the formatting of individual words.

[OwenGeo]

@JanetSilb_Spike - Thank you for sharing your feedback about the size/layout of your collection's title.

We just did some quick testing, but we are not able to reproduce the issue. It would be best if you could please report this to Esri Support so they can gather all the required information to properly document, track, and prioritize this issue for a fix in a future release.