DeMorgen turns Antwerp into a bucket list with Timepath GeoStory
Kaja Vasstrand
Digital Marketer
De Morgen x Timepath GeoStory
What do you have to have done at least once as an Antwerper? De Morgen put that question to locals, collected the answers, and published het echte Antwerpen in 50 cruciale tips — the Antwerp edition of a city bucket list that also covers Ghent and Brussels. They chose Timepath GeoStory, and specifically its bucket list mode, because a city guide is only as good as a reader's ability to act on it. Here is what they built.
1. A List and a Map, Not a Choice Between Them
The story opens on a Lijst / Kaart toggle. The list reads like an editorial card deck — photo, category, headline, the tip itself — while the map puts every entry in its place in the city. The two stay in sync: pick a card and the map moves to it, tap a pin and the card opens. Readers planning an afternoon use the map; readers browsing on the tram use the list.
2. “Wil ik doen” and “Gedaan”
Every tip carries two buttons, and they are the heart of the format:
Wil ik doen: saves a spot as somewhere to go, marked in blue on the map and counted at the top of the story.
Gedaan: ticks it off in green, so progress through the city is visible at a glance.
It sticks: the choices are kept per reader, so someone who comes back weeks later finds their own list where they left it.
That is the shift. A ranked list is read once and forgotten. A bucket list with progress on it is a tool, and tools get bookmarked, shared and reopened.
3. Filters That Match How People Actually Decide
Fifty tips is more than anyone browses in order, so the story filters the way a reader thinks:
By category: horeca, culture and the rest, each with its own pin colour on the map.
By status: show only what is still to do, or only what has been ticked off.
On the map itself: pins update with the filters, so the map always shows the shortlist rather than everything at once.
4. Credit Where the Tips Came From
These are local recommendations and the format says so. Each entry names the person behind it, with their photo next to the tip, and a route link opens directions to the door. It reads like advice from someone who lives there, because it is.
5. Their Site, Their Brand
It was vital that the bucket list felt like De Morgen rather than like a widget:
Custom branding: their own typeface, their own red, their own logo on the cover.
SEO-friendly embedding: a script embed puts the experience on demorgen.be, on their own URL, with their own metadata and social cards.
A proper colophon: a Colofon at the end credits the journalists and photographers who made it.
The Final Touch
By pairing the spatial context of a map with a checklist readers own, De Morgen did not publish a city guide — they published something Antwerpers keep. The same shape works for a festival, a coastline, a set of hiking routes, or every restaurant a critic reviewed this year.
See it live: De Morgen’s city bucket list
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