Design History Mashup

I aim to explore how the selection and/or visual representation of text can reveal new connections between it and the location(s) it relates to.

Text as Form

• strips away to bare essentials of text
• no information necessary to add to the map to make it recognizable (does not mean necessarily functional)
• factual & functions as traditional maps do, by naming/claiming certain areas
• reinforces information from traditional maps

Layla Curtis

New York

• ink on tracing paper (I believe she traced the text from an existing map)
• little interest in typography; just shows text only & that it is still functional
• seems very direct & trust-worthy; handwritten but not personal

Jenny Beorkrem

City Neighborhood Posters - Chicago

• still pretty accurate (in some sense) b/c she’s fitting the text into delineated forms; all right angles
• single typeface; & clean but with sameness and sterility of traditional maps
• size & color as ways to differentiate between neighborhoods

VladStudio

Typographic World Map

• one typeface for all; all caps make it kind of imposing & intense “RUSSIA!!!”
• distortion of country size is emphasized even more than normal b/c not only comparing the size of the countries & continents to each otther, but you’re also comparing text size

Mark Andrew Webber

City Linoleum Cuts

• Paris is roughly 5’ x 6’; not sure how big New York is
• a flow between the different sections of text; interaction that Jenny’s don’t have and feels maybe more accurate with the complete dissolution of borders
• different typefaces give character to the different locations (but nothing handwritten)

Text as Form/Text as Source

• Text still fills a more-or-less traditional mapping frame (city, country, etc.)
• Difference is selection of text is relevant to location, but the text is not traditional mapping information

Unknown

Missed Connections

• some obvious visual similarities to Jenny Beorkram’s maps, but using different data
• of the last hundred or last two weeks of Craigslist Missed Connections posts per state mentioning a specific location at which the connection was missed.

Vera Evstafieva and Andrew Biliter

St. Petersburg: City of Words

• seems to be hand-illustrated
• seems more emotional...more of a love note to the city

Ian Huebert

The Literary City

• Composed of words from poems, songs, stories, etc. that mention San Francisco
• “loosely” based on St. Petersburg: City of Words map

Mike Boruta

Mouths Open Wide

• Map of Athens, Ohio, by things he overheard and his own thoughts at a location
• text selection over text visualization
• use of type v. handwriting makes it seem more “accurate” & “real”, but conflicting with the recorded information...reduces all the text to the same “feel”
• interesting to record extremely transitory data, which forces the issue that all maps are using transitory data; this map was never accurate for a single point in time...