#mapping monday

[mapsandraps]

Mapping Monday: Patterns & the Minimal

I'm pretty into paying attention to small details, but it can be easy to miss the big picture when you take a look collectively. I'm a big fan of keeping things simple but sometimes I feel like I need to jazz things up. Here's to zooming out every once in a while! 

A couple of things for your Mapping Monday: 

1 - - A minimalistic design series: London Underground Depot Postcards 2 - - Morocco in prints, by Jessica from my skillshare class 3 - - Paris by Arrondisements, via Anne Ditmeyer 4 - - A design print. Madewell dress in Mapview (there's also a shirt, jeans, & umbrella!)

& bonus: an interactive distance site to show our relation to Mars (via one of our friends).

--Sharon

[mapsandraps]

Where Would You Like to Visit?

Pink Lake, Senegal (Via Barcroft/SPL)

Val's written about a few things on her bucket list in the past, so let's talk about it in terms of location. Where are you wanting to visit in the future? 

A broad point of geography that's super interesting to me is how things (like culture, appearance, food, weather, activities, or even demographics) change with geographical location. What's cool about that aspect is that it's not just worldwide but also local: think city-wide (like this satirical Austin map). 

With that in mind, where are places that you guys would love to visit, and why?  Or maybe, where off the globe? 

I think it'd be neat to visit Malaysia again because I haven't been back since I was 12, and one of my aunts got to take a tour of Israel, which sounded fascinating. I'd also love to visit a French-speaking country in Africa... like Senegal, where this lake is pink! Apparently, it's pink because it can contain up to 40% salt and organisms that love salt and produce red pigments thrive there. Also, it's so rich that salt collectors have to coat their skin with butter for protection. Nbd.

Any plans to travel globe-wide soon? Also, check out our city guides that a few of our friends have submitted about places they've lived in. 

--S

[mapsandraps]

Blinking City

For today's Mapping Monday, I wanted to share this pretty stencil map from Blinking City, showing several neighborhoods in Beijing.

The project highlights areas of  "fast pace transformation" that change faster than you can record them--"As soon as the map is done, the city it describes has already gone." 

For every advantage of instantaneous mapping through the internet or GIS, I think there's a slight shift away from the quality of maps through more tangible media. Despite the ease of digitizing information, having it updated regularly, and enabling global access to it (even by tweeting our friendships, blogging our thoughts, digitizing our surroundings), there's still something enjoyable about preserving the quality of something a little more tangible. 

We've forgotten--not all awesome maps are on paper. Some of the best are through the most unexpected ways! We can still value paper as a great medium (like this paper cut map), but what about legos, wooden words, magnetic puzzles, or a cement wall? 

--S (Images via Instant Hutong, StudioKMO, Palomar, Roberto Bosco, Sally Gao, Steven Mattern)

[mapsandraps]

Interactive Maps

(Source: map.web2summit.com)

Long gone were the days when people thought maps were boring or for map nerds. Ok fine, they might still be here, but the boom in technology doesn't just use our location to let us broadcast to our friends the neat places we get to go to or to find a new restaurant for dinner. 

There are a million ways to show the relationship of objects and their location, and the neat interactive maps of today are of no expection. Here's why they're so cool:  

They can tell a story, like through the geographical origin, class, and fate of the Titanic passengers. 

They come in all formats, like in tiered animations that can explain Inception, through remodeled older maps that can tell the history of a river over time, animated drawings of Montpelier, or a compilation of info to visually locate great adventures. 

They convey tons of information at a glance. You can toggle between before-and-after's of satellite imagery and find out what room you're looking for indoors. Plus, soon the 2-D maps we're used to will soon be more aesthetically pleasing in 3-D and more accessible to almost everyone. 

Not all of them are just pretty pictures! There's plenty of those too, but we'll save that for another day. 

Check out this crazy map of the internet economy. Looks like Risk, but in a land where everyone has wifi.

--Sharon

[mapsandraps]

GPS Drawings

Hey folks! Hope you guys had a restful weekend. To kick off your week, I'd like to share a link that a coworker sent me for today's Mapping Monday!

A biker named Christopher Wallace wanted to blend "creativity and exercise with technology" by planning bike routes around town that are shaped like dragons, skulls, owls, and fun animations. Then, he rides his bike along these routes with a GPS and screenshots his GPS pictures afterward: 

A pretty neat idea, right? It'd be interesting (and nerdy-cool, haha) to see words, your name, or questions in these pictures, too. 

Also, we're planning on setting up an embedded map of all of our reviewed locations here on Maps and Raps and blasting you with mappable goodness. Stay tuned! 

P.S. More bike stuff? Beautiful custom-made wooden bicycle fenders by Woody. 

--Sharon Images via enpundit

[mapsandraps]

Maphead

(Haven't seen this state before. Source: bnreview.barnesandnoble.com)

Know someone that's terrible at directions?

Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac, has won Jeopardy a whopping 74 times. Last year he released the book titled Maphead, which I've been casually perusing this past weekend. 

I've already grown a fondness for this book--not just because I kind of like maps, but also because Jennings gives a plethora of illustrations showing how relevant geography is. Not only is it relevant, but it's used every day: everyone uses some sort of spatial thinking and some kind of mental map to get around and do ordinary tasks. 

So about "your friend" that's bad at directions, here's an interesting point: multiple studies show that lousy mappers and spatial thinkers actually "respond well and quickly to relatively simple interventions." This means that people that are "lousy" at reading maps are perfectly capable--they just might not have put enough time into trying to understanding them. Jennings then mini-tests this on his directionally-challenged wife by walking her through a map, and surprisingly, she's able to navigate them around on their Washington D.C. trip, thanks to only an hour's time of map reviewing.  

I've only started so far, but the beginning has proved pretty chock-full of  knowledge and Jennings' eccentricity. I'll be looking forward to the rest of the book, and I'll be sharing the goodness in future posts! 

--Sharon