Jack Schluze and Matt Webb’s design consultancy in London has produced Here & There (seen above) which visualizes Manhatan simultaneously as a map in bird’s eye view and as a projection at eye level view. They invert the curvature of the earth to create a horizonless view. It seems pretty effective in visualizing the environment both. Thankfully they aren’t silent about it too. If you check out their Blog they go in to detail to explain their influences and what they were thinking. They even go so far as to offer prints for sale.

[Schulze & Webb]
[Here & There]

If you couldn’t tell by the weather that it was autumn you can tell by the avalanche of new blockbuster games. Today marks the North American release of Fallout 3 – a highly anticipated game having already won numerous awards before it was even complete. We first got hands on this game at X08 in Toronto earlier this year and were excited by what we saw even in that early and limited demo build.

The original Fallout by Black Isle Studios won a lot of awards too and is still recognized amongst the best games. This sequel has seen the franchise switch developers to Bethesda Softworks – the same developers of the much celebrated Elder Scrolls series. With a pedigree like that this post-apocalyptic RPG certainly has a lot of expectations to live up to. continue…

When people draw maps by hand the results can often be both charming and telling. There is always an element of character to the maps as they have a personal bias beyond just objective visualization. They’re off to a somewhat slow start and seem to have a contemporary focus rather than historical but the Hand Drawn Map Association is archiving some examples. We agree with them that the stories behind the maps are often as interesting as the maps themselves which include some subtext complementing the story if you look close enough. Their archive isn’t generally as punny as the example imaged here though. Drawing quick little maps by hand definitely captures something GPS and online mapping can not.

The BBC and English television in general has a knack for providing us with some great documentaries. There is a new one worth checking out for all you information visualization fans called Britain from Above. It’s basically all about visualizing geographic information from an overhead (orbital style) view, revealing traffic patterns and other trends layered over Great Britain.

Pecay over at BibliOdessy has collected a few examples of satirical maps from the first World War. They function as political cartoons diagramming both geographic conditions and sentiment regarding various regions. You don’t see many such maps produced anymore but their charm is undeniable as they anthropomorphise various countries giving them personality and character, illustrating how they all interact.