“The Depths She’ll Reach” was Decimal’s first collaboration with Long Lead, a story studio that produces “journalism without compromise.” Together with Jacky Myint we produced this multimedia profile, written by Xan Rice and video recorded by Daan Verhoeven, recounting how Alenka Artnik emerged from obscurity and mental health struggles to become one of the world’s most elite athletes.

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We designed the website to immerse the reader in the sensation of freediving. To that end, original underwater videography was used as the background to the editorial copy. In order to balance the elegance of freediving with Artnik’s strength we used the serif font (GT Super) for the display and the san serif (Aeonik) for the body copy. The result is a timeless but forward-thinking editorial experience.

Diving into a web-based long read can be overwhelming to readers. To let them come up for air, we designed a progress bar on the right hand side that is similar to the rope that a freediver follows into the depths. We put markers for the various sections on the progress bar so readers could come back and click down the bar to quickly get back to where they left off.

Sometimes a subject’s voice is necessary to tell their story. In order to fully submerge the reader in Artnik’s dives, we layered audio clips with the diver’s voice. We used transparent videos, effectively creating a floating button that readers can press to turn the audio on and off. We also added captions to be more accessible. We took the concept through to execution, not only solving a big editorial challenge but also adding an element to the experience that wasn’t in the initial plan.