Click image to see full graphic
A bugbear of mine is people who jump at using a map as a solution for a set of data that happens to include place names.
“But what’s the story?” I ask.
Matt Ericson explains so eloquently, with examples, why maps aren’t always the best solution even if at first glance they might seem the most obvious.
The 'Above ground' Piccadilly line poster was created in 1996 by the in-house design team at LondonTown.com, known then as Globalvision, art directed by Steven Potter, designer Stuart Cannon. The underlying map of London landmarks was a giant oil painting (8ft x 3ft in size) which was photographed before digitally applying the tube network. It was commissioned by London Underground and designed specifically to sit in the recess by the door of the then new trains.
Further to Eye magazine’s Winter 2010 issue featuring a series of ‘great moments in information design’ I’ve contributed this map as a piece of work I’ve long admired. Read why on Eye’s blog.
(Other contenders on my short list were Ordnance Survey’s 1:25,000 maps, crystallographic point groups, materials selection charts, the yellow pages, paris/barcelona metro’s direction-of-travel light bulbs. I’ve already written about the latter. I dare say the others will put in appearance on this blog at a not-too-distant point in the future.)
Released earlier this week, the New York Times’ visualisation of the whole of the USA’s local census data city by city, block by block, is impressive. As ever they’re leading the field with a slick, clear, fast and easy to use data tool. But to be honest I nearly dismissed it as just another whole heap of data made pretty on a map.
"Looking @ my hometown on #nytcensus. Sad that the most striking feature is the Baltimore Penitentiary" @interfluidity
Then they released the invitation for readers to share their local views of the map. It gets a whole lot more interesting. Click on ‘View Readers Maps’ [mmm, missing apostrophe there] top right. Select a message to see that person’s individual take on a particular view. The data takes on meaning and relevance to individuals. One example shown left.
This is a good model for such massive databases. Make the vast database available (in a slick, clean, fast, easy to use way) and then let users find and add the stories. While it’s been tried before this is the first time I think it has really worked.
Databases are dry. While they will reveal their secrets to statisticians it’s a challenge to make them digestible, and useful, to the world at large. More often than not the fact that the database exists seems to be driver enough to justify publishing it. But I’d argue if you can’t find a way to tell your audience something useful, interesting, surprising then you may as well not bother.
The kind of thing that would be great, for example, is a database about schools that would tell you something like “Pupils at XYZ school are happy most of the time and their exam results are impressive”. How much better is that than limitless charts, tables, numbers or super-complex graphics?
(This is something I’d like to research but) I think there is a large chunk of the population who really don’t like charts, numbers, tables, finding them either intimidating or just dull. They don’t even look.
So hats off to Schooloscope who manage to tell parents exactly what they want to know about their local schools, simply and immediately. It puts a human face on a vast set of potentially dry statistics. And, for those who really want to see the data it’s only one click to find clarification of any of their statements from the source reports.
In Barcelona…
…and Paris
Foreign tube/metro/subway systems can be confusing. This is a really low-tech but highly-useful solution for indicating to passengers which direction the train is travelling in. The lights come on as you pass through stations.
Most recently I was appreciating it on a trip to Paris, but I know it’s a system used in Barcelona too (and lots of other tube systems judging by a google search). Not London. Yet?
Hurray, they’ve arrived in West London! It’s a simple concept well executed and deserves to be taken up across the city: site-specific maps, oriented to their situation which show how many places are within either a 5 or 15 minute walk of the spot you’re standing on. And they highlight places of interest around about.
I first heard about this ‘Legible London’ scheme at a talk what must be three years ago now by Applied Information Group, its creator. First rolled out in the West End I’m glad that it has been deemed a success and so continued its spread. Lots more info and better pictures here.
It must have been a phenomenal amount of work in that each sign is tailored to its spot, but a worthwhile effort nonetheless if it makes people realise that it really is a lot quicker to walk to Covent Garden from Leicester Square rather than take the tube.
And all credit to whoever coordinated this mammoth project to achieve consistency across such a vast area and the different stake-holders that that would have entailed. There have to be lessons worth sharing there too.
With half of my family in New Zealand it wasn’t uncommon for us, as children, to want to dig a deep hole down through the garden until we got to New Zealand. Turns out I’d have been better doing that somewhere in the Atlantic just north west of Spain.
This isn’t a necessary graphic, but it is simple, original and rewarding, the kind of graphic that comes about by someone having a quirky idea that, well executed, can be enjoyed and appreciated by others too.
Why I blog. I also freelance. I run workshops too. Who I am (LinkedIn). Some of my work (Flickr). Contact me via contact at lulupinney dot co dot uk.