Design Review for Feedback

[vknoppkewetzel]

The test style can be reviewed here

Overview

I have created some style updates based on conversations with OHM team, which begin with the need to improve road contrast in residential roads (#554). That expanded to update primary and motorway link roads, and the prominance of those roads and need to balance them appropriately with other elements of the map near roads meant considering other visual hierarchy contrasts across the map.

GreenInfo Network discussed some of these visual hierarchy considerations with OHM for the basemap in our last meeting a few weeks ago - noting water color needed changing to help alleviate some contrast balance, and also began conversations about removing some gray from the basemap colors. Conversations at that point discussed considering changing rail from a gray tone to a blueish-gray tone. Adjusting tonality helps shift a dark/heavier gray to becoming something that blends into the basemap more... while still holding enough contrast as a distinct element to be distinguishable and notable. The map has gray tones in other elements of the map, so I also considered where else I could remove gray tones from: the largest visual contrast element in the map with gray tones are administrative boundaries, so I also adjusted the admin lines to have more of a green-gray tone. The green-gray works well with the terrain overlay (which brought in a lot of green to low and mid level zooms).

I utilized zoom based styling to make considerations for all visual hierachy considerations. For example - road contrast considerations has casing removed at mid-level zooms, and the primary and motorway roads shift to a darker color at mid level zooms (that still balances with the rest of the map). As you zoom in, the (darker) casings appear and the primary and motorway roads shift to a lighter color. I tested the best time to bring in the casing so that the visual adjustment felt "natural".

Similarly, I removed rail tick marks at mid zooms and brought them in at higher zooms - the visual clutter/contrast was improved (alongside the tone adjustment to a blue/gray for main rails). Additionally, I adjust the tick mark gaps so that the tick marks had a little more "breathing room" for main rails.

With the above considerations in mind, please read the below

Style changes

Road Contrast

Changes address #554

As noted above, non-primary and motorway roads received a contrast adjustment. They now have slightly wider casing, and a lighter gray casing color. The wider casing provides enough visual contrast to help improve visibility, and the lighter gray change helps ensure the non-main roads do not rise in prominance in visual hierarchy.

Per conversations with OHM, I adjusted primary and motorway roadways by changing white casing to a darker casing - darker version of the primary and motorway roadways, respectively. This initial adjustment caused primary and motorway roadways to be too visually prominent, so I had to adjust colors to both the casing for primary and motorway as well as the colors of the primary and motorway roads themselves: I made them lighter than the current OHM orange/red colors. This helped ensure that the overall map remained balanced, and did not bring the roads into more visual prominance (which would be okay for a road map but not this main map).

I tested the map at all zoom levels, adjustments made with casing per what made sense for visual hierarchy styling across all zoom levels. As noted earlier, I removed casing at mid-level zooms. I also adjusted colors for primary and motorway roads and provided zoom level based styling: at mid-level zooms, the primary and motorway roads themselves are darker, and after mid-level zooms, the casing "turns back on" and the primary and motorway roads themselves turn lighter. Visually, this is not jarring: I tested at what zoom level it was appropriate to do so.

Water Color

I adjusted watercolor: lighter. Making the water color made sense alongside considerations for visual contrast, as was discussed in our last OHM meeting. After a lot of color testing, the main area where adjusting water color (and clashing/lack of legibility) was some green spaces - in particular, nature reserve. I adjusted the nature reserve color (see above in Yellowstone) to a different green, and tested globally (currently only other nature serve I could find is a small area in Mexico) so this green adjustment does not affect anything, and helps make changing water color easier.

This new blue is lighter so allows for easier "stacking of future data" on top, as more data comes in, this will be helpful.

Railroads

Rail is currently very visually prominent on the map because of the gray tones as well as the ticks, as noted in Overview.

Also as noted in the Overview, I adjust the gray to a more blue-gray tone for most rail-related layers, and also adjusted when the tick marks show up (not at mid zooms), and increased the spacing between tick marks for normal rail layers (not mini rail):

• [x] We will want to get feedback from OHM users on this rail adjustment (such as Natfoot in Discord)

Admin boundaries' color (and label halos)

Updated:

I made this adjustment based on conversations we had about there being a lot of gray in the map, and how making some minor adjustments would improve some contrast balance. At low and mid-zooms, the admin colors are a gray-green color, which works well with the underlying terraining. Upon zooming into to higher zooms, it adjusts to a more gray-leaning green-gray color, but still is a little less contrasted than the existing version (see above comparisons). Live link review required for all of these, but especially this one, as images shrink sometimes to fit the ticket.

I found #207 and #279 for previous admin boundary conversations (and I am sure there is far more history than that!). Let me know if gray is preferred for admin boundaries, and then can remove this from the general update if gray is preferred.

While looking at admin boundaries, I also noted that admin halos could be adjusted slightly, so changed halos to white in order to remove some gray as well

[Bauer33333]

For railroads you may also take this issue into consideration, implementing it would clean up a lot: #287 Especially already well mapped areas like Seattle are getting pretty full:

How does your design cope with complex yards, are they easier to read with less orthogonal slashes? Most of them aren't rendered anyway due to the lack of suppport for siding, but those that do are quite messy.

[vknoppkewetzel]

Thank you @Bauer33333! I will take a look at that ticket and think about how possibly adjusting visibilities per usage to help with visual clutter. @natfoot appreciate any feedback you have on rail in this Design Feedback ticket as well!

[1ec5]

I adjusted watercolor: lighter. Making the water color made sense alongside considerations for visual contrast, as was discussed in our last OHM meeting. After a lot of color testing, the main area where adjusting water color (and clashing/lack of legibility) was some green spaces - in particular, nature reserve. I adjusted the nature reserve color (see above in Yellowstone) to a different green, and tested globally (currently only other nature serve I could find is a small area in Mexico) so this green adjustment does not affect anything, and helps make changing water color easier.

Lightening the water color changes the style’s mood dramatically. I think it’s a big improvement. That said, we’re no longer using dark fills at all, other than kind of for parks. At high zoom levels where there’s no terrain, the style looks kind of washed out, as you’d expect more from a data visualization basemap style. Maybe this is a good thing, encouraging mappers to map more POIs. On the other hand, this would be an opportunity to darken roads, road casings, and waterways to produce more definition. For example, at the first zoom levels where primary roads come in, they very easily get drowned out by terrain.

OSM Americana similarly had very dark water to begin with. In ZeLonewolf/openstreetmap-americana#610, I lightened the water as you did. To maintain each waterbody’s definition, I added a darker line for coastlines, shorelines, and riverbanks. I also applied this darker color to waterways to help them stand out against parks and other fills. You might not find it necessary to lighten protected area fills if you darken the waterways instead.

The challenge with waterlines is that the vector tiles only represent waterbodies as polyons, not as linestrings. Simply rendering these polygons with a line layer results in an unsightly seam at each tile boundary and also at the mouth of any river. As a workaround, I placed the waterline layer beneath the waterbody layer. Casing layers are normally implemented as the same layer type as the thing it’s casing; however, I implemented it as a line layer instead, since the style specification lacks a property for outsetting a fill layer.

An ordinary outline would make waterbodies look bloated, and result in some visual artifacts at tile boundaries. So I made the waterline a hairline and gave the waterbody layer a 50% translucent outline. Since the waterbodies aren’t buffered, these 50% translucent outlines add up to fully opaque pixels at tile boundaries and anywhere where two waterbodies meet but only 50% at coastlines/shorelines/riverbanks. The waterline layer shows up beneath that outline, making it darker than the waterbody.

Also as noted in the Overview, I adjust the gray to a more blue-gray tone for most rail-related layers, and also adjusted when the tick marks show up (not at mid zooms), and increased the spacing between tick marks for normal rail layers (not mini rail):

I appreciate the subtle use of blue-gray (and also green-gray for boundaries). The more spaced-out rail ties will help to reduce clutter. Consider darkening rail lines slightly, so that they contrast better against land, especially at zoom level 17 where terrain is still visible. Currently they’re virtually indistinguishable from county boundaries:

[vknoppkewetzel]

Thanks for this feedback! I am looking forward to checking out the work you did on Americana with water related work, if you have links out to that, would love to read through with Tim as well.

I will look into the rail color adjustments as well!

---

I think all of the above is great commentary and I agree, I have been intentionally maintaining some general balance with the updates. I think this is, as noted on the call, a great reminder of wanting to figure out the overall OHM Design Goals and determine what we do or don't want to emphasize more (at different zoom levels/thematically). I would love to really dig deep/do research/have discourse/bring community and determine what we (OHM map designers, OHM, and community) believe is the best data to highlight at specific zoom levels.

The reality is I can make all kinds of changes based on what I data I believe to be more interesting, or what aesthetics I enjoy (which equally can include me making full color changes to make the map be very vibrant across data, while still balancing visual hierarchy), and I also could in theory make adjustments to make a map look like a particular style inspiration as well - which we could try and do, if we decide that is a better pathway than determining what data is a priority per zoom level. My understanding with this path forward is that OHM began with a little bit of style inspiration - before my time, “Geographia highway map of the United States” by Alexander Gross (1950), which Tim discussed a little here.

I would love to, as you said, determine what the data we should (or shouldn't) highlight and continue to discuss and determine what OHM's Design Goals are and come up with what OpenHistoricalMap should look like, based on community input as well as considerations on what data "should be highlighted over the course of history (and why)" on a map that shows a lot of data at once. OHM has provided unique opportunities like "how to showcase data historically, what should we build to support that" (result: the timeslider 🎉 ).

I eqully think that the OHM default map provides a unique opportunity to define a unique cartographic use case: How should we style (all?) historical data - at once, over time, across zoom levels? Today, cartographers and designers can speak to why a map should highlight roads and other particular data layers for road maps; or how to emphasize terrain and what are the best data, design, and color choices for the different ways to show terrain; what are the best (and worst) color ranges for depicting weather data; and so on and so forth - but there isn't any single use case where all of history is being mapped. So we get to define that - and that is exciting! But I think "what gets highlighted and brought to the foreground" should be design choices that are made with the same amount of intention as is made for navigation maps, for example (design = highlighting road infrascture + salient landmarks + other relevant navigation).

All of this to say.... that I am excited that you are excited about figuring out what data we should bring to the foreground as well! Maybe we can use our next monthly meeting to have more conversations around that topic?

[1ec5]

I am looking forward to checking out the work you did on Americana with water related work, if you have links out to that, would love to read through with Tim as well.

Most of the discussion around that work took place in ZeLonewolf/openstreetmap-americana#610, which also contains the code that I wrote for it. Note that OSM Americana is actually a Web application that builds the entire style at runtime using JavaScript code, but the code is just bits and pieces of style JSON anyhow. I’ve heard that ohm-website transforms the style into something similar.

There was also some side discussion in OSMUS Slack:

https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C01V02K52UX/p1626579657471400 https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C01V02K52UX/p1670454337209139 https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C01V02K52UX/p1670615330426679 https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C01V02K52UX/p1670549609314729

For what it’s worth, openstreetmap-carto used to have waterlines but regressed them and looks unlikely to bring them back: gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto#3926.

The reality is I can make all kinds of changes based on what I data I believe to be more interesting, or what aesthetics I enjoy (which equally can include me making full color changes to make the map be very vibrant across data, while still balancing visual hierarchy), and I also could in theory make adjustments to make a map look like a particular style inspiration as well - which we could try and do, if we decide that is a better pathway than determining what data is a priority per zoom level.

To be clear, I’m not interested in nitpicking about what gets shown at what zoom levels. I rather like that I don’t have to worry about it for OSM Americana because OpenMapTiles makes all those decisions for me (not always very well, but not my department).

Rather, my feedback presumes that any feature depicted at a given zoom level should be legible enough to identify, whatever the reason it’s included. The terrain layer makes this more challenging. But if the intention is for roads, rail, and borders at that zoom level to sort of recede into the background as texture, then that’s fine too. It certainly looks aesthetically pleasing, and I understand that there are tradeoffs associated with overemphasizing transportation features, especially in time periods when such things were not as prominent in reality.

I brought up this feedback about waterlines and mid-zoom roads because it seems like you’re encountering some of the same visual constraints I have in recent months, but I don’t mean for it to push you in a particular direction.

[jeffreyameyer]

@vknoppkewetzel - can you make a post about these proposed changes & ask for feedback @ https://forum.openhistoricalmap.org/? We'll steer people over there to see what additional feedback we might get. I will say - there's so much in this set of changes, it's almost a little intimidating to review them all! But! Let's see what we get.

[vknoppkewetzel]

Hey @jeffreyameyer yes! Sorry week has been very busy I will get on this tomorrow 🙏

[vknoppkewetzel]

Forum link: https://forum.openhistoricalmap.org/t/design-feedback-for-ohm-map-updates/56

[PaulTheArchivist]

I'm a bit concerned that this makes railway lines very difficult to see. I think given the importance of railways to the transport network especially historically they do need to be given more prominence, and also need to be distinct from other features. It seems to work reasonably well on OSM Carto.

Personally I'd also prefer a slightly darker blue for water - it seems a bit too pale for me. Mostly I don't think that's too much of an issue though I think it's a problem for canals which are only represented by a very thin line (unless mapped as water areas, which requires a lot of work). Although the thin line is no different from the current style, the change in colour on top of that I think makes them not prominent enough for something which in many countries was historically (and for some canals today) a key part of the transport network.

Apart from that I think this looks good and normal roads seem clearer.

[vknoppkewetzel]

Thanks @PaulTheArchivist for this feedback! it makes sense that historically rail should have visual prominance because of the reason you noted. I'll take a look at emphasizing more and balancing

[vknoppkewetzel]

Demo style

Design updates

Rail prominance

Increased rail prominence as line causes difficulty reading state boundaries as well as more visual clutter (hence de-emphasizes before for legibility):

To bring back visual prominence of rails and balancing the above issues, I changed rail symbology, and removed track lines altogether, and replaced with the other rail visualization, which is a dashed line which includes two color tones. in this instance, I went with a slightly darker blueish gray, and white (see below). As you can see, it is much more legible.

Dashed lines posed a problem, as in existing maps, rail exists alongside dashed admin lines:

To resolve this, I adjusted corresponding dashed admin lines so that this was not an issue (see below). The trade-off for more visible rail is balancing visual hierarchy by removing dashed lines from admin data and adjusting those (example: city_county_lines_admin7_8 is now a thinner non-dashed line, see below image, thin line in river)

I made "usage=main" more visually prominent:

Water

A couple comments noted that the lightness in the water and rail color update caused some rail to be harder to read. Updates: rail adjusted to be a darker gray, and water adjusted to be more contrasted

Made water be zoom-based color styling, so less vibrant blue at low-mid zoom, and more saturated when zooming in:

[Bauer33333]

Is it intentional that yards now seem to render at level 11 and further away and dissapear at level 12 and closer? Or is something else going on here? Zoom level 11: Zoom level 12:

For a better understanding of what you see zoomed to the same location on OHM: and ID:

If this is really what is going on, it should be the opposite way around imo

[vknoppkewetzel]

Hey @Bauer33333 can you drop a link to the same coordinates (to OHM or OSM or the demo style) so I can also compare with the same spot you are looking at? that would help me make sure I see what you are seeing and compare elsewhere too. ty!

(but without seeing the spot you are looking at, no, no rail should disappear at z 12 so want to see what you are seeing 🙏 )

[Bauer33333]

Sure, here you go: https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=17/49.00389/8.41386&layers=O&date=1890-01-01&daterange=1890-01-01,2023-12-31

[vknoppkewetzel]

Hey @Bauer33333 I have updated the style to ensure yards are showing up. You can review the update (and other upcoming updates) in this demo/test style. You will see this latest release to the OHM style in the next week or so.

[Bauer33333]

Thank you! Looks great! I dind't expect lots of parallel lines to look that clean, especially compared to the old OHM style, and unlike ORM you can even see that there are multiple tracks instead of just a big single colour blob. I also like how the parallel yard tiles get a bit brighter than the parallel main line tracks when you zoom out so you still see a slight difference. But maybe this is related to my short track lenghts.

I don't know areas with a lot of mapped yards yet but it may be worth reviewing the min zoom levels of different track types in the future when the map is a bit fuller, it becomes messy and tiles take longer to render. But we should be fine for a bit longer now with the cleaner tracks.

What is the max zoom limit for? Having everything (this isn't railroad specific) dissapear when you zoom in very close is a bit weird. Wouldn't it make more sense to block zooming in at level 24 or the 20 the normal website ends at? Instead of the 26ish it is now on the test style with the last two just being void.

[danrademacher]

We've deployed these changes and also a new railway style (#658 and related tickets), so we're going to close this out