Best of Kottke: Maps Ahoy!
#OhMyGodICan’tBelieveHowManyPostsJason’sWrittenAboutMapsInTwelveYears
This is a very slim, highly-curated selection of some of Kottke’s favorite maps, emphasizing the old, weird, and awesome:
- Marco. Polo. Google. Rachel Leow retraces MP’s voyage in annotations to Google Maps. I’m in this post!
- Maps as metaphor. Things like a recipe for omelettes conveyed in the form of maps.
- The beauty of maps, a BBC series.
- A Milky Way tube map.
- Ten maps that changed the world.
- 20 cool ancient maps.
- Maps of tunnel networks, the physical kind, not IPvWhatever. Great map of the Maginot line.
- Aerial map of NYC from 1924.
- A three-year-old’s view of the NYC subway. OP drew a map showing landmarks most relevant to her niece.
- Caricature map of Europe, 1914. France is a kepi-wearing elephant, Norway and Sweden are trolls that look a lot like fish. (Probably just the shape.)
- Strange maps. You don’t say.
- Nazi invasion of the USSR. This one’s in Flash.
- Harry Beck’s Paris Metro map. Beck designed the London tube map and tried Paris. Actual map’s behind a firewall, but Jason’s description is good.
- Typographic map of London. Like synthetic cubism with letters.
- Maps drawn from memory.
- “Wikipedia has a series of maps showing the political and social boundries of the world in 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 500 BC, 323 BC and so on.”
- Historical maps on Google Earth.
- Map of the galaxy in which Star Wars takes place. Update: This one has succumbed to linkrot, but Wikipedia’s got your back.
- “The Mannahatta Project is constructing maps of what Manhattan was like in 1609, before its ‘discovery’ by Henry Hudson.”
Enjoy!
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