March 31, 2005

Crackerjack maps. Based on lenticular printing. Via the blue's agatha_magatha.

Speaking of truly useful mergings of maps and technology, Google's maps have been making our household very happy.

  • This is very neat, but wouldn't you want to see the subway and streets at the same time? (Most of the time I use a NYC map is when I'm looking for where to pick up the subway.)
  • jb - actually, they've managed to design the maps very thoughtfully in that respect. Here's a quote from the first link: One design rule that White insisted on was that the layers shouldn’t abruptly turn “on” and “off” like a traditional blinky card. Instead, he wanted the layers to fade in and out of view as the map was tilted. This would let viewers study the subway layer but also see an image of the street grid or the neighborhood map. In fact, they even went so far as to map the subway lines from scratch, showing their actual layout in the city as opposed to the more conventional stylized subway maps. Pretty darned cool, in my opinion. We need more thoughtful product design in everyday things!