Wisdump

Dumping wisdom on design and the web

  • Design
  • Blogging
  • Designer Resources
  • Design Critiques
  • CSS
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us

The Beauty of Whitespace in Maps

August 9, 2011 By Franky

Having lived in several different countries and towns, public transport always has been a constant in my life and so have subway/tube maps. First time I arrived in London I was surprised how easy it was to navigate the London Underground Map, which in this form first was released in 1933.

London Tube Map(click for full size image)

The London Tube Map is a design classic and worldwide recognized as a symbol for London. When Harry Beck designed the map in it’s new format, he changed the until then standard geographical concept and decided only to implement the railway topology and not the geographical situation of London. Geographically correct the map would look like this. At the same time every non-underground clutter was removed and London had become a symmetrical pattern of straight and 45 degrees lines.
Although there are minor geographical distortions in the official London Tube Map, it’s beauty lays in the symmetry, the usage of equally spaced out distance between stations, the 45 degree angles and the usage of adequate whitespace. Even though the map features many subway stations (275) it is perfectly readable, even at smaller pocket sizes.

Becks’s style has often been imitated, been adapted by many other companies/towns, but never has anyone reached the same level of popularity with a tube map as Becks has with his London map. Both Amsterdam (NL), who even credit the London Transprt Museum on their map, and Tokyo have the same concept and perfectly manage it to ruin a great principle with clutter. Other towns, such as Paris, make their map unreadable with too much of text and too little contrast or add visual noise to an otherwise outstanding map such as Moscow.

Maybe I’ve lived too long in the UK, but the London Tube Map is one of the most brilliant designs I’ve ever seen and used.

Filed Under: Design Tagged With: Design, maps, Whitespace

Geotagging Blog Posts – Do You Want Your Readers To Know?

February 28, 2008 By Thord Daniel Hedengren

geotagging.jpgThis post over at The Blog Herald got me thinking. It’s about geotagging posts, which means showing people where you are on a map.

Why? Well, sometimes it might be relevant to see where in the world you were when you published a post, especially if you’re doing a travel-focused blog.

However, do you really want people to know where you are? Tabloids in Sweden ran a story on burglars using blogs to find out who was on vacation, and then broke into their houses. While that might happen for sure, I believe this particular story was a way to scare people into buying issues, reading about those scary blog things.

That being said, being at least a bit anonymous is what a lot of people find appealing with blogs.

Would you consider geotagging your blog posts?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: geotagging, maps, privacy

Categories

Web Design Tools You Wish You Knew About When First Designing Your Website

It’s easy to have perfect vision in hindsight, but when designing a website a little planning ahead can give you a perfect vision from the get-go. Many web designers find themselves performing redundant tasks, or creating things with manual effort that could otherwise be automated. Check out these useful web design tools that you’ll be […]

Best Resources to Use for Web Design Ideas

Web designers may have their own ideas when creating a layout design for a website but similar to writers, they also experience the so-called mental block syndrome at certain times. Fortunately, the web has a wealth of information available and designers can always turn to it for inspiration. It may surprise you to know that […]

The “Horrible Web Design Client:” An Infographic Look

Web design is a new frontier in creative designing. It takes a special set of design skills to make an effective web site. A good web site is not just pretty to look at, or filled with a lot of cool Flash animations, it is also easily navigable, with well laid out elements that are […]

Pagelines PlatformPro 1.3 – The Upgrade

PlatformPro 1.3, the latest upgraded version of the successful PlatformPro Theme by PageLines, has finally hit the market. Packed with 20 or so new options and features, it has undergone some major changes; the most important of which are listed here: The new Web Typography tool provides direct integration with Google’s Font API. This provides […]

Design tip: use extraordinary imagery

Drawn.ca has posted 2 interesting sources of atypical imagery which, I realized, can be great design inspiration: First, Dogfoose uses close-up images of produce in his illustrations. The sample below uses broccoli as treetops for a kids magazine illustration: What an amusing way to channel the miniature look (achieved through tilt-shift photography) for infographics purposes! […]

iThemes Builder – Your one-stop WordPress Theme Builder

This revolutionary new theme is incredibly easy to install – simply upload it into the themes folder, click activate – that’s it! As with all their themes, iThemes have included a My Themes widget, providing links to special features within the theme itself, as well as relevant information for the configuration of WordPress. The layout […]