PIxel City Maps Are Here / / No Comments Isometric NYC has definitely started a new trend for developing pixelated interactive city maps. In the last few weeks it has inspired Isopolis in San Francisco and London, drawn in London. Now a new project is taking the idea to Brazil – and suggests that we could soon be seeing a lot more of these pixelated cities. EARTH TO PIXELS earthToPixels has now transformed aerial imagery of João Pessoa, a coastal city in northeastern Brazil, into a sprawling, SimCity-style isometric pixel-art map. Like the earlier maps, the pixelated map of João Pessoa is a joy to explore. Buildings, roads, parks and coastline are transformed into a giant isometric pixel-art landscape that you can... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: City, Here, maps, Pixel
The Coffee Barista’s Maps / / No Comments Aside from maps, I would say my next biggest obsession is coffee. For the last couple of months, my favourite bean, Finca La Bolsa, has been out of season and unavailable from my local roasters. I’ve therefore been using the opportunity to experiment with beans from different regions, different taste profiles and different processing methods. For some reason, it has only just dawned on me that there might be some coffee maps I can use to help me discover new beans to add to my coffee repertoire. Map of Coffee Origins & Flavors Lightyear Coffee has produced a number of data visualizations based on data collected from coffee roasters. These include a Map of Coffee Origins &... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Barista's, coffee, maps
(MAPS) Painting By Number / / No Comments Here’s a little thing I discovered about Chicago: the higher a street’s number, the further south it is from the city center. You can see this very clearly on North America’s Numbered Streets. This interactive map colors “all streets with a ‘#st’, ‘#nd’, ‘#rd’, or ‘#th’ in their name in North America, as drawn from OpenStreetMap.” Zoom in on a city on North America’s Numbered Streets and, if it uses a numerical street-naming convention, you’ll probably notice that the smallest numbered streets are near the center of the city, while the largest numbers stretch out into the suburbs. In most cities,... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, Number, Painting
Bending Maps, Inception Style / / No Comments One of the most memorable scenes in Inception sees Leonardo DiCaprio’s character walking through Paris as the city appears to fold in on itself, with entire streets rising from the ground and bending over the characters below. The surreal effect makes the city seem like a three-dimensional model that can be manipulated like a sheet of paper. Orbify is exploring whether something inspired by this visual trick could have a practical use in car navigation. Orbify’s patent-pending image-processing system takes a 3D map model and warps it onto a curved surface. Instead of having to choose between a conventional top-down map and a perspective view of the road ahead, both can be displayed... more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Bending, Inception, maps, Style
The Most Optimal Road Trip Maps / / No Comments In 1954, a landmark paper in computer science famously solved the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by proving the exact, shortest route to visit all 48 contiguous state capitals plus Washington D.C. The underlying puzzle is deceptively simple: given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each location once before returning to the start? That breakthrough Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, most, Optimal, road, Trip
The 5 Best 3D Subway Maps / / No Comments Shinjuku Station has a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s largest and most bewildering transport hubs. The Shinjuku Station Indoor interactive 3D map tackles that complexity by turning the station’s official indoor mapping data into a clean, schematic three-dimensional blueprint. This map strips everything back to the essential geometry of corridors, platforms and rooms, making Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: best, maps, Subway
How Maps Save Lives / / No Comments Fifty thousand people were killed on February 6, 2023, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern and central Türkiye and northern and western Syria. The Night the Earth Shook, Strangers Started to Draw tells the story of how the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and thousands of volunteers responded by rapidly creating detailed maps to support rescue efforts. The Night the Earth Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Lives, maps, save
Metro Music Maps / / No Comments Over a decade ago, Alexander Chen’s iconic MTA.me turned Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map into a live, plucking string instrument. On this map every time an MTA train crosses the track of another line, it twangs like a musical string, transforming the frantic energy of New York’s transit grid into a delicate, real-time composition.The itch to turn transit data into music has recently Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, Metro, Music