Map Fun with Niemann

Posted on April 23, 2013 by marleen

You might already know some illustrations by Christoph Niemann: he also did this great stereotype map I’ve shown earlier this year. Niemann’s great illustrations have appeared on covers of The New Yorker, Time, Wired, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration, and he has won awards from AIGA, the Art Directors Club and The Lead Awards. Yesterday a friend of mine pointed me at these funny Google-esque maps. You should actually see them all (because almost every single one cracked me up). Abduzeedoo created a nice overview, so make sure to check them all out.

A Map of the World

Posted on April 13, 2013 by marleen

Gestalten recently added a new beauty to their range of impressive map books. ‘A Map of the World’ showcases contemporary maps by designers, illustrators and mapmakers from all over the world. As the publisher states: ‘Maps help us understand and navigate the world. For centuries, maps have become better, more refined, and more precise—there are no blind spots anymore. While Google Maps and GPS systems have become our tools of choice for navigation, contemporary maps have evolved into platforms for cutting-edge illustration, experimental data visualization, and personal visual storytelling.’ Couldn’t agree more! ‘A Map of the World’ consists of a great collection of maps, varying from very personal narrative maps to accurate street plans. Full of cartographic experiments, bright colours and enough pretty maps to look at once in a while: this book will make a great addition to your book collection. Oh, and do you remember the Cosmographies by Carlos Romo Melgar I blogged about last year? He is one of the featured artists in this book!

Map Easter Egg

Posted on March 28, 2013 by marleen

Getting ready for the weekend? Usually there’s a lot of eggs involved in Easter breakfasts and brunches. This decoration tip by blog Sugar and Charm certainly charmed me!

Photo credits: SugarandCharmblog.com

Underground Scene: Tube Maps

Posted on January 29, 2013 by marleen

You can’t be surprised by my love of underground maps. Now look at this beauty:

Max Roberts, expert on underground maps, has designed this new way to look at the London tube map. The commonly used map of the London Underground is becoming even more cluttered, hence this new circular approach. But besides this intruiging map there is even more: Roberts wrote a terrific book about metro/underground/tube (whatever you like to call it) maps: ‘Underground Maps Unravelled’ and is doing a lecture on February 19th in the Design Museum! I quote from their website about the talk by Roberts: “Since 1999, Dr Maxwell Roberts has been working on an ongoing research project to understand transport schematics, their effective design and how to evaluate them using objective methodology. In this lecture he presents his comprehensive catalogue of visual experiments and discusses his findings.” Go, go, go!

Furthermore: the book is very detailed and the book design is incredibly fresh and suitable for the subject: various tube lines running over the corners of the pages. It’s on my wish list!

Couch Material: Soft Cities

Posted on January 26, 2013 by marleen

Thanks for your topic suggestion Jeroen! These map blankets are great. Especially since it started snowing again here in Amsterdam! Oh well. It is not that bad if you cuddle up under one of these blankets and wait for spring to arrive…

Soft Cities is a San Francisco-based company that sells blankets and napkins featuring a map of your favorite location. You can pick the location yourself, Soft Cities makes the map using open source data provided by Open Street Map (Soft Cities collaborates with Stamen Design, OpenStreetMap.org, and Cloudmade, under the creative commons license SA-by-SA).
Oh and as said, they also do ‘ mapkins’. Love it!

The Map Watch

Posted on January 6, 2013 by marleen

@mapperz mentioned this map watch to me on Twitter: a great new initiative called Leikr (by a group of former Nokia engineers). So the Leikr team is into technology and creating new devices, and they happen to also be passionate about sports: running, biking, triathlons, etcetera. That is why they started to develop this watch: other GPS watches were simply not meeting their standards. Not easy to use, too big, screen too small, bad GPS signal, etcetera.

The Leikr watch has OpenStreetMap, a fast custom made GPS system and a screen that is big enough to see where you’re going. Plus, you can add training programmes and send your results directly to the cloud (no hassle with wires).

Great! Only thing is, the developing team from Denmark still needs funding. There is a Kickstarter funding website (were you can read the whole story, check out some videos and more images). Planning is for the watches to be ready in June 2013. So if you want to speed up the process, fund them.

map watch Leikr

Leikr watch in docking station

MATC loves TimCity

Posted on December 27, 2012 by marleen

While having a coffee at KOKO Coffee & Design in Amsterdam (great spot because of the way the place looks plus: the coffee is amazing), I noticed these T-shirts and shoppers with city maps. Designer René Tim is fascinated by cities and wanted to capture the energy of the city in these designs. The result is called TIMcity. High-quality T-shirts and shoppers with Paris, New York City, Barcelona or Amsterdam: a clean map lay out, soft materials. G-R-E-A-T! (you can buy them online and at various hotspots).

Photos from the TIMcity website and the nice blog www.sienapon.nl.

Smooth Operator Mapstyle

Posted on November 8, 2012 by marleen

If you ask me, Fashion & Maps are a great match. Another (actually quite tight) example is this collection of Black Milk Clothing. They have all kinds of cool prints but this one is obviously my favourite. I like the leggings most! Great description in the webshop: “I designed these leggings after getting a lot of complaints from girls that they didn’t have any clothes that would allow them to relate to pirates and other mariners from the 17th century – in the event that they were accidentally transported back in time. So I made these. Now all is well.” (Oh and they have free shipping throughout November, hooray!).

Put your Wall on the Map (and vice-versa)

Posted on November 1, 2012 by marleen

Looking for a nice gift for the upcoming months of festivities? This wall sticker is a great way to add a little map happiness to your interior. And at &Klevering in Amsterdam it’s on sale even! (they do international shipping)

Map Ringing

Image

Last year I blogged about a ring of the highway around Amsterdam. Two weeks ago I found this jewel of a map ring of Amsterdam at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. Map rings are hot! This ring is done by designer Jutta Regitz, her label is called Rille and consists of bags, pins and rings made from old school maps.

When you browse Pinterest with a specific word you find tons of nice examples. Turns out there is a whole lot of map rings out there (all rings below are found in this overview)!

Maps and the City

Maps & Design

Tag Archives: design