It’s no secret that here at Visual News we are real suckers for maps and clever illustrations, so when we found these designs by Belgium based design studio Khuan + Ktron we were floored. Each of their designs, whether representing some real location or a conceptual idea, playfully illustrates a world of large landmarks, curving roads, and happy people. [Read more...]
It’s hard to imaging a visualization more beautiful than this new animated map of wind speeds across the continental U.S. Individual lines delicately weave their way across the land in Vincent van Gogh like fashion, tracing near real-time wind forecasts around the nation and giving us a mesmerizing view of everything from breezes to gales. [Read more...]
Ever since Google came out with its street view feature the world has become a lot more accessible. With just a few clicks you can find yourself walking down the Rue de Rivoli or exploring the Australian Outback. Every once in a while though, the Google car camera catches something so extraordinary that it makes you stop in your tracks (your clicks?). The 25 images below range from soldiers to polar nights, from Parisian lovers to burning vehicles, all of them a testament both to modern technology and the strange yet interesting world we inhabit. [Read more...]
If you are a cartography buff, or really dig on some good old strategy gaming, then this game is for you. Like a new take on the classic board game Risk, the gaming site Major Command is quickly attracting a rabid fan-base of map hungry strategists from around the world. Their mission? Conquering the world by dominating their enemies. [Read more...]
When trying to think of the most romantic city in the world, most people would guess Paris, but it turns out that London has had more Valentine’s Day hotel and travel bookings than any other European city. So for the cover of the St. Valentine’s special issue of Evening Standard magazine, which featured an article about this, visual designer Charis Tsevis created a beautiful illustration. [Read more...]
If the designers of 1950s suburbia had been allowed to run completely amuck with their road planning, their outcroppings of American dream homes may have looked something like the drawings of Ross Racine. That’s right, these aren’t scanned and manipulated photographs, cut and pasted together, but rather drawings done freehand directly on a computer and then printed with an inkjet printer. His meticulous works look at the relationship between design and actual lived experience, looking to subvert the rationality of urban design, and bring light to the uncomfortable quirks those design choices hide below their surface. [Read more...]
How far we have come in modern advertising… and how much we’re missing! Nearly 130 years ago W.H. Hill & Co produced this colorful pig-themed example of cartography, featuring the states and territories of 1884′s America. “Sole manufacturers of Hill’s Hog Ringers, Hill’s Triangular Rings, Calf & Cow Weaners, Stock Markers, etc,” the map is a perfect example of early day product placement, although a subtle one: each of the featured hogs has the companies unique triangular ring in its little snout (even the curtain is held back by their signature triangles). [Read more...]
Built with almost no regard for the hills that dominate its landscape, San Francisco’s grid like street layout and near vertical roads are unique in the world of cities. The “City by the Bay” really started growing after the California gold rush started booming in the late 1840′s, so by the time the gorgeous map featured here was made in 1912, the city looked remarkably like it does today. What was missing were many of the attractions the city is now best known for: noticeably absent is Pier 39 and the very crooked section of Lombard Street. Also yet to be built: the Golden Gate Bridge. [Read more...]
As Chris McDowall rode the Auckland Public Transportation system in his home of New Zealand, he often imagined how all the busses, trains and ferries would appear carving their daily path from above. He would try to visualize the varied trajectories of each vehicle as they zig-zagged through the complex network… and it’s no surprise that he admits, “after a few moments I would get hopelessly overwhelmed and go back to reading my book.” Thankfully for McDowall and the rest of us, Auckland Transport published its Google Transit Feed data to MAXX, giving all the information needed to create an animated visualization of the network over a typical busy Monday. [Read more...]
It’s easy to lose track of where you’re traveling on a subway: the train leaves the station underground, the windows grow dark and soon you arrive at your destination… but how far did you travel? Even the maps of the worlds subways, with their easy to read simplified formats, mostly lack any sense of scale for the underground system. These simple maps by Neil Freeman at Fake Is The New Real, add that missing element, cluing us into how big an area these people moving networks cover. Try comparing the maps of San Francisco and Paris… the scale of the results is revealing and surprising. [Read more...]
