Posts tagged ‘mapping’
Feb
08
2011
Splendiferous Culinary Tools
Ever since I started taking culinary arts classes back in the fall, I’ve developed an appreciation for beautiful and well-crafted kitchen tools. Heck, I even stroll through Williams Sonoma for fun.
Pop Chart Lab made a detailed mapping of over 100 kitchen implements. I love the visual language in this poster and I learned about some interesting new tools.
via Fast Company
Oct
13
2010
Urban Typography
Axis Maps produced a gorgeous series of typographic maps illustrating geography through typography. The works appear as a typical maps viewed from afar, but close-up details reveal only words comprising the landscape. As described by the creators:
Created as a labor of love, these unique maps accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing by type. Only by manually weaving together thousands upon thousands of carefully placed words does the full picture of the city emerge.
Some more interesting typographic posters at Ork Posters
Oct
12
2010
Mapping European Stereotypes
Europe’s cultural, ethnic, religious, and political diversity naturally leads to its various nationalities developing stereotypes of the Others. Graphic designer Yanko Tsvetkov created a series of entertaining maps to give us an idea of a few countries’ perspectives of their neighbouring states.
It’s interesting to note how these stereotypes typically reveal more about the country (or our perception of the them) that is doing the criticizing.
Europe according to Britain
Europe according to France
Europe according to United States
Via FlowingData
Aug
05
2010
Locals vs Tourists
The places people experience in a city differ depending on whether they are tourists or locals. Mapping geo-tagged photographs illustrate the distinction between tourist shots (red) and local shots (blue) in Montreal. These maps tell a narrative of one’s journey through a city through either the eyes of a local or tourist, highlighting the varied points of interest of each group. And indeed, they are usually quite representative of people’s expected patterns of movement. More city maps here.
Source: Urban Photo
Jul
29
2010
Colours in Culture
A visualization mapping of how different cultures across the globe attribute different meanings to colour. Not only is it interesting to compare the differences in how colours are perceived, but also how certain attributes or values carry meaning in a culture or not at all.
Source: Information is Beautiful
Jan
31
2010
Wayfinding in Colombia
Source: wikipedia
Colombian cities and towns are mostly organized on grid plans, where streets running north-south are known as Carreras and streets running east-west are Calles. Other types of streets include Diagonales and Transversales. Street orientation is quite simple as they are numbered sequentially.
The most interesting aspect is their addressing system, which consists of a series of numbers in the form Calle 23 No 5-43, for example. This address refers to the building on Calle 23, 43m from the corner of Carrera 5 toward Carrera 6. Given any address, it’s possible to accurately pinpoint any place using this format, making it one of the most precise addressing systems in the world. Quite an easy and practical wayfinding system.
Nov
18
2008
Visualizing Mobility Patterns
Dan Boyarski, former head of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design, visited HK PolyU as a guest lecturer over the past three weeks to conduct a design studio workshop with my class. We were asked to collect data about ourselves over five days to create a visual representation. In this sense, it becomes information design in the form of a self-portrait.
I tracked the locations I visited, my routes and the modes of transportation I took, then sketched out my patterns following the form of the Hong Kong map. I also kept track of the times at which I travelled so I considered the use of colour to differentiate the different days and times of travel.
Because of the rich data set I had collected, it was important to convey the information on both a macro and micro level for the viewers. Macro view gives a big-picture idea of the data set (the map pattern), while micro view communicates the details of my travels, such as the date, time, exact location, duration. I created a colour-coded timeline to engage viewers on the micro level, which also acts as a legend for the line colours and types on the map.
I presented the final piece as a printed poster 23″ x 16.5″.
Detailed Views
Data Set
Concept Sketches
Nov
17
2008
Sai Yeung Choi Street
Setting out to Sai Yeung Choi Street South in Mong Kok to conduct field observations can be quite overwhelming. Being in the heart of one of the most dense areas on the entire planet, one’s senses can be completely inundated by glowing cantilevered signs, wafting smells of street food, blaring sounds of music and voices through loudspeakers, and the pushing of bodies in the moving crowds.
Hong Kong’s tourism board touts the street as “Electronics Street” so we decided to map the street layout to include the store category types lining the street. We also studied the sidewalk and vehicular road space along with the directional traffic routes.
With the implementation of a pedestrian scheme, we realized it made sense that the street employs ever-changing one-way directions to discourage vehicular traffic. During the evenings and weekends pedestrians take over and the street comes alive with spontaneous performances and informal activities and social gatherings.
After observing street activity during the daytime and evening on both weekdays and weekends, we analyzed the various spaces, uses, and activities present on Sai Yeung Choi and mapped them along private/public and informal/formal axes. From this point we decided to focus our field research to address our hypothesis: enabling pedestrian activity facilitates new interactions and functions on Sai Yeung Choi Street South, defining its unique character in the context of Mong Kok’s themed streets and making it a good public place for youth.
