You Lower the IQ of the Whole Street

I. ‘Twixt Daleville and Chesterfield

It’s the lull before the storm. Tomorrow, the plan-making & general getting-everything-sorted-ening for the summer (& fall) begin in earnest. Now, though, I can take stock of what’s soon going to happen.

Two big things loom large in the coming months. One I’m not comfortable telling anyone about just yet. The other is big and daunting and many-headed and involves a lot of hopping back and forth between Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Except I might not be going back to Muncie. Instead, depending on how things shake loose, I might find myself in Anderson this fall. Anderson, for those you who aren’t Indiana people, is about forty minutes southwest. An easy pop down 32. All I’m saying is, logistically speaking, this move would be a walk in the park. It’s so close I (probably) wouldn’t even need to rent a truck.

But still I hesitate.

Finally

Yay.

I may change a few things around here and there, but it’s pretty much done. That bit around the Lakeland, FL station is held together with spit, twine, and the will of the Almighty. I still have some concerns about colorblindness legibility & whatnot that I might get sorted later.

Based off this and this. Ostensibly dates from some indeterminate point in the late 60s, early 70s, might as well be timeless. Just one portion of a personal wishlist re: rail transit in North America. Will happen in meatspace when pigs fly. Indulge me.

New Thing ZOMG

Like that’ll ever happen.

I made a different version of this map some months ago, but it really sucked. (DIN, bright green, and 12-pt stroke widths do not mix.) I’m happier with this one. Not sure if the angled type is a good idea, but it does work thematically with the Indy Trolley Map from way back when (for which this thing is a sort-of-but-not-quite companion).

Been playing around with fonts recently. I think this one looks half-decent. Could use some more grotesque fonts, though.

Hello March

More notes, since that’s all I have time for lately:

• I recently finished an alternate-history map of the British Isles that posits what would have happened if the Norman Invasion just went a little bit wrong. (Long story short: a fracturing & subsequent loose coalition a la the Holy Roman Empire.) I rather like it. Only reason I haven’t put it up here is it’s huge. Like, 12 000 x 20 000 huge. I’m saying it pretty much only works as an SVG, which is a shame.
• CountryLink map is half-finished, and has been half-finished for about a month now. I had a life dropped on me at the last second, what can I say.
• The Dublin Luas map is terrible. I might take a crack at it soon-ish.

First Post 2013: Two Quick Notes

• Had the opportunity recently to plow through the TfNSW Long-Term Masterplan. Sounds pretty good. Hopefully we’ll have the political will to finally deliver something large-scale. (Absent that, however, I’d settle for the SW & NWRL and the CBD trams.)
• Re: the splitting of RailCorp into Sydney Trains (CityRail suburban) and NSW Trains (CityRail Intercity & CountryLink), my thoughts on it come from I guess the mapping angle. Cameron Booth looked at the current CityRail map some time ago and said that one of its flaws was how it had to show all of the services and was rather cluttered as a result. (I ran into this problem when I tried to redesign it and the resulting map turned out to be really, really big.) Maybe this could be an opportunity to throw together like a Sydney/NSW Trains app that has different, I don’t know, “levels.” Like, you zoom in to the suburban/metro or tram network and zoom out to the intercity or statewide network. That way your maps could have room to breathe but aren’t, like, huge.

Messing Around Some More

The colors, they are mesmerizing.

And now, a CityRail strip map. Because why not? I may take a crack at drawing the big CityRail map again, for funsies.

Vignelli said “a map should be a digital map,” so this infinite canvas will be curiously liberating.

Messing Around

Look at ‘em all snakin’ around like.

Go me for finally breaking out of Helvetica Hell. This you’d probably find on the website. Is it sensical?