I’m attempting to make a map style for possible use in Dopplr that follows the principles outlined in Kevin Lynch’s "Image of the City".
Lynch contended that we make legible mental maps of the city with 5 types of object: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
I’m trying to make a style that emphasises these, and eschews the ‘satnav’ style car-oriented mapping. It must be noted that this is a style that works most effectively at city-scale zoom levels, which it’s intended for. It looks pretty useless at country-scale.
I’m really enjoying using the Cloudmade editor, and it’s intriguing to think of the presentation of maps with dynamic/swapping styles that are fitting for certain contexts of scale, rather than the same scheme all the way from satellite to street view (no pun intended…)
That’s really lovely. I love how the contrast makes the natural shapes of the city apparent. I love that the tools are getting out there for people to really be able to play with this kind of thing.
This is great. I’ve always had a fascination with Lynch’s work and like how you’re integrating that into CloudMade’s maps. Any chance you’ll make your map style public?
Visual resonance: http://ffffound.com/image/866f7f3c86ea7eae8edcd3fa9a06aa187c1585dd
What Chris said. I’d love to see this go public.
Thank Terry and Chris – I’ve shared both “lynchian_mid” and “lynchian_light” (a slightly lighter version) at cloudmade.
Remarkably reminiscent of some of the oldest city maps.
(I mean like ‘John Speed’ old).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Speed
[...] great example? Check out Matt Jones’ lovely [...]
Sweet! Thanks.