Not sure how to get from Penny Lane to Itchycoo Park? Curious where Highway to Hell intersects with 8th Avenue Heartache? Never fear — just consult this amazing song map from creative collective Dorothy, which is, you guessed it, a “road map of song titles.” Some references are universal and some are for true music nerds only, and as the creators say, “just like places in our own neighbourhood, some are really good and some are best avoided – remember ‘Love House’ by Sam Fox?” Yikes. Click through to check out the map, and head over to Dorothy to buy a print for your own House of Fun. Read More »
Yanko Tsvetkov’s Mapping Stereotypes project looks at the world’s misguided opinions about their neighbors far and wide. The Bulgarian-born, London-based designer entertains what Americans — who exist in the “civilized world” — really think about the rest of the map. (Hint: California is loaded with “fake boobs and oranges” and Alaska is land of the hockey moms.) Tsvetkov’s works also poke at Europe’s stereotypical worldviews, adding what the Vatican feels about those “frigid women” and where gay men go to drink “posh beer.” Click through for some amusing impressions. Read More »
Map nerds: prepare to be seduced. This beauty hails from The General Atlas of the World — an 1854 volume printed by A & C Black Publishing Company, the same folks who issued early editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The tome contained steel engravings from well-known cartographers like William Hughes and featured close to 70 maps. The Victorian map featured above charts the rivers and mountains of its time — something that becomes more apparent when you note that Dhawalagiri is listed as the tallest peak, not Mount Everest. The color-coding and drawing (those root-like rivers and bloody volcano clouds are amazing) make this a particularly stunning little map. You can zoom in on its legend over here.
Your typical New York City day can sometimes feel like a ’90s video game — navigating the crowded subway cars and sidewalks, frantically collecting coins, vanquishing foes in your single-minded quest for glory. Perhaps that’s why Jesse Eisemann‘s Super Mario-style map of the city feels so right. Eisemann has drawn in everything from the Apollo to the Bronx Zoo to the Chrysler Building to Coney Island, and while we imagine some Queens residents will take exception to the way their borough resembles a burned-out wasteland, we find it pretty wonderful. Now, if only someone would actually make this into a side-scrolling platform game (perhaps for the iPhone?), we’d buy it in a second. See the full, animated map here. [via Gothamist]
Since we’re fairly well known to love all things typographic, most things minimalist, and many things relating to the cities we adore, perhaps it’s not surprising that we’re totally into these classy minimal typographic transit maps, which we spotted over at Colossal. Simple and sleek (and effective as functional art, if you already have a basic understanding of where things are in your city), we think they would fit nicely in any modern home, whether you prefer the Boston, Chicago, London, New York, San Francisco or Washington D.C. varieties. Click through to see a few of the designs, and head over to TRNSPRTNATION to buy one for yourself.
According to Zero Per Zero, the subway line map is the symbol of city. In their series of railway system maps, the Seoul-based design firm manages to cover all of the basics (stations, important landmarks, etc.), but also focuses on the character of cities, e.g., paying homage to Milton Glaser in their map of New York and channeling the Japanese flag in their take on Tokyo. In other words, while these maps might serve a practical purpose, they’d also look good hanging on your apartment’s walls. Click through to see our favorites so far, and stay tuned: according to their website, more locations will be coming in the future.
Bright colors, music, and vintage design are all good ways to catch our eye, so we were hooked on Jerry Meyer’s new work from the moment we laid eyes on his The Hit Parade over at Designboom. But Meyer’s Technicolor jukebox is more than meets the eye. One of many Photoshop-enhanced lightboxes on view in his Civilization and Its Discontents show, it mixes real songs (“Killing Me Softly”) with pathos-filled parodies like “My Tear Ducts are Blocked” by The Macular Degenerations, casting a shadow of aging and mortality over a cheerful-looking object of nostalgia.
As the show’s title suggests, Meyer’s work explores Freudian obsessions, anxieties, and neuroses through a pop-culture lens: Very Trivial Pursuits (3AM Edition) is a mashed up game board cataloging thoughts that might keep you up at night (“What happens if I can’t remember that I can’t remember that I can’t remember?”), while the show’s title piece is a New York subway map where Manhattan is “Lust,” The Bronx is “Crazed,” and Queens is “Indulgence.” See these pieces and more images from the show after the jump. Civilization and Its Discontents runs through May 28th at New York’s Denise Bibro Fine Art.
Maps can be complicated things; they can obscure more than they reveal, depending on who is using it and what is understood. In Songlines, Bruce Chatwin introduces the aboriginal idea of mapping out the world through song, beginning with the unforgiving terrain of western Australia. In modern times, they have been used in reconnaissance missions, assassination attempts, and the division of urban areas. They can also be navigational charts that allude to the location where treasure is buried or even the cave where Osama bin Laden has been hiding all these years. In the following novels, maps are used as guides for the reader to understand the place described. They aid and abet our imagination, ensuring the suspension of disbelief that is necessary to fully take in the story. So what better way to start the immersion then to take this quiz? Just slide across the black boxes at the bottom of each page to reveal the answers (or to cheat).
The BBC has recently launched an experimental web project called Dimensions, which allows users to overlay ancient cities, famous festivals, and environmental disasters over modern maps to get a sense of scale. The site can be used to try to better understand the impact of both catastrophes, like the flooding in Pakistan, and everyday occurrences, like the growth of urban spaces. It’s also a great way to kill a good half hour of time. Click through for some of our favorite maps.
