Schematic hometown maps

[rasagy]

Hi everyone,

As discussed in the class, let’s pick our hometowns and create schematic maps for tourists, or a specific use case. You can see some of the previous maps created on #37 & #27.

Here are some references to go through:

Schematic Maps:

Get inspired by the story behind the most seminal schematic map: London Underground Map by Harry Beck, and a critique of the old design along with some interesting alternatives in this TEDx talk on usability of metro maps.

Closer home, have a look at the Isometric & Schematic map of the IIT B by Prof. Mandar Rane.

Here is the process behind one of my schematic maps: Andamanese Language Map.

A Guardian article featuring animations transforming schematic maps into geographically accurate representations.

A great collection of schematic maps of most cities around the world created by INAT, like Delhi & Mumbai.

Cartography / Map Design: Essays on Digital Cartography by Justin O’Beirne.

David Rumsey’s huge map collection for some vintage cartography inspiration.

The Five Elements for forming a mental model of a city, from Kevin Lynch’s book The Image of the City.

Resources: Maki icon set for using quick icons under CC0 license, do try editing them in the Maki Editor if you want to customize them.

[maulicule]

Schematic Map of Thane

I've lived in Thane for the better part of my life, and it has been an amazing 18 years or so growing up with the city itself. The city has developed remarkably in the last few decades, with taller buildings and malls getting added to the cityscape. I'm quite sure we hit our growth spurt around the same time, although Thane still seems to be growing.

Thane lies to the north of the Mumbai Metropolis. Flanked by the green Sanjay Gandhi National Park on one side, enclosed by the Ulhas river and Thane(Vasai) Creek to its north and east, Thane is also known as the City of Lakes. It used to be surrounded by over 30 major and minor lakes, but only a handful now remain. The Thane railway station has a significant place in our country's history of progress - the first railway train in India (also the first passenger train in Asia) connected Thane and Bori Bunder in Mumbai. History lessons apart, there's a lot that Thane has, and I'm just going to try and look at the places which someone new to the city would enjoy/be able to make use of (other than a nice cup of tea, of course. For that you'd have to join me in Powai).

Source Map

The source map that I have used comes from Open Street Map (OSM), and can be found here. I referred to Google Maps to confirm certain data before tracing, especially the administrative boundaries of Thane City.

The zoomed-out view is somewhat like this:

Traced Map

Initially, I just traced out the map, kept the basic colour scheme the same as the default on OSM, and worked one getting a rough tracing of the geographically-correct positions of various features. Of course I'm completely ignoring the messy grey smudges of buildings.

I also marked out the administrative boundary of Thane City, and faded out the other parts in the map in order to get an idea of the key content I would be dealing with. This could actually work well to separate out the district boundary later. The Five Elements mentioned by @rasagy above are a useful check when considering the content of interest. In the exercise I decided to go ahead with the following:

• [x] Major roads
• [x] Natural and administrative boundaries, like the Ulhas River, Thane Creek, as well as the manmade Toll Naka etc.
• [x] Nodes like popular lakes and the railway station, which also serve as landmarks
• [x] Visible landmarks like the Yeoor hills, which form a part of the backdrop of the city

I might later add in specific points like popular hang-outs, malls, junctions and so on when isolating landmarks. Or maybe not. Currently only considering larger natural and unavoidable manmade forms, not dealing with labels, colours or specific landmarks. Would probably ask mom and dad and friends to add in some more if they can remember

Towards a Schematic...Alright, All Right!

Tried out something with just right angles, in an attempt to distance myself from the exactitude of geography and also to get a little warmed up and ready for further exploration.

Complimentary: Nostalgia for the Windows XP pipes screensaver 😛

Sketches and sarcastic comments galore:

All the Curves and All the Edges

Making a conscious choice to use gentler curves to depict the more organic features, like vegetation, water-bodies etc., while keeping it sharp and geometric for the manmade features like roads. This, I think is a decision I'll be sticking with to the end unless strong enough reasons exist to change approach.

/* Feedback Separate the elements

• [x] roads (all a family) v/s railway
• [ ] forest v/s hills (National park as opposed to Parsik area)
• [ ] creek/river v/s lakes (directionality, water, etc.)
• [x] differentiate the dotted lines, esp. border

Encoding

• [x] railway track (refer vintage maps)
• [ ] forest (patterns, textures?)
• [ ] hill shading?
• [ ] addition of artistic elements - boats in lakes etc.
• [x] border as — · — · — · — · is it even required? Maybe using opacity might work out
• [ ] hierarchy of encoding

Remove clutter, space out the crowded areas, etc. Orientation could be played with, imp. to consider if it is relevant The elements that help people imagine a city help them make a clearer mental model of it The schematic is subjective, but clarity of the mental model is important Who are we designing for? Would a tourist be able to figure out which is an intersection which isn't? Use of thumbnails for zoomed out view A bit more of paper exploration could go a long way Casing: Border that a road has --> merging v/s overlap

*/

Getting There

Incorporating some parts of the feedback, such as casing, differential colours, better encoding and hierarchies, etc. Doing away with the city-border in favour of a subtler opacity shift to indicate municipal bounds. A lot of small changes, some fact-checking, etc. Adjusted the paths for a cleaner look and feel.

Finishing Touches

Layering on the icons - and pointing out important areas like malls and station. Added some labels and went through a few iterations of Typography adjustment, finalizing the fonts to the web-based sans serif fonts Asap and Montserrat for their clean aesthetic. Subtle colour-scheme changes followed this, to keep the natural semantics intact while bringing out the contrast between the main mapped area and the 'field' which has been screened out. Halos were added for clarity in the intersections and overlaps in the road network.

[prachitank]

Solapur Schematic Map

I started out with tracing out the map of Solapur and identifying the roads, lakes, temples, colleges that the residents (user interviews: my mom and dad) use to identify a part of the city and could possibly be used as a directional markers for the map.

Next I created a few sketches which smoothened out the roads thereby making the map less visually cluttered. Tried out two options - one with roads at 90 degrees (an attempt to make the letter 'S' was done but let go of) only and another one with (extremely) rounded rectangles.

The latter was more representative of the actual layout of the city, so I decided to go ahead with that.

Digitised it

Lucky for me, the Bhuikot Fort along with the lake and temple next to it are in the approximate centre of the ring road. So I started with making icons for that. The current idea is to use the fort as a central location marker and the main roads that go out of the city as directional markers. Instead of changing the thickness of the roads, I used tints to differentiate. Maybe the stark difference if the icon style and road style can be revisited.

Tried out another version with non geometric lines.

[rishivanukuru]

Schematic Map of Navi Mumbai

2 Additions, Last Update 26/10/2019

While my hometown is Hyderabad, the only city I know anything about is Navi Mumbai, so that's what I went with for this exercise.

The problem is that Navi Mumbai is big. I decided to limit the area under consideration to the part of Navi Mumbai that's between Vashi (the oldest developed locality) and Kharghar (one of the newer localities to the south). This area is what I'm most familiar with in general.

An unlabeled map (from Google through SnazzyMaps) of the area looks like this -

Starting out

I began by outlining the main transportation channels - The Mumbai-Pune Highway, The Harbour Line train network, and the Palm Beach road that runs along the periphery.

I wasn't able to make a decision about what to focus on, so I printed this image out to see if drawing on it helped.

Now Navi Mumbai has always felt like a collection of localities that have agreed to co-exist and share resources but have very distinct identities in themselves. I wanted to make that aspect of the city come through on the map. The localities look something like this -

Idea I

Navi Mumbai is also the largest successful planned city project in the world. My first approach was to combine the individual locality units into a very 'Navi' and planned structure. The sketch idea looked like this -

And the current digital version looks like this -

The three main transportation channels figure into the map, and the train stations are marked along the Harbour line. I've also marked a few regions of interest. The black star is my home, the blue diamond is 'The Jewel of Navi Mumbai' (basically a pond), the purple circles are big commercial malls, and the red areas are sports and outdoor activity venues.

The waters from the Creek between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai can be seen to the left. A belt of mangroves separates that from the land. A set of hills takes up most of the space in the middle and top right section.

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If this is alright as an idea, there's a lot that needs to be done. Refining the shapes and lines, choosing colours that make sense, adding more information and points of interest, and other things that will pop up along the way.

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Idea 2

Even though Navi Mumbai is supposed to be a planned city, it really hasn't developed in that manner. Sometimes, it feels like a money plant slowly building its way down to Pune. The road network sort of lent itself to this idea, so I tried something on paper -

And then digitised it to an extent (90 degrees counter-clockwise from the above view) -

The main stem is the Mumbai-Pune Highway, and the localities are leaves springing out of that. The Palm Beach road is a branch supporting the structure at the bottom, and the Harbour Line is a wheat-stalk-like thing snaking its way up the plant. The leaves are actually quite representative of the localities, and the main transport lines are represented in a much more accurate manner than the planned map, as can be seen from the overlay image -

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I realised that it was turning more into an art project than one about schematic maps, so I just left it at this low-detail stage. It still seems like an interesting idea though, and I'd like to know what you think about it.

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Addition 9 September 2019

What I did -

• Added another level of important roads
• Placed Navi Mumbai in context of Mumbai and South Navi Mumbai
• Indicated connections between the local road network and highways by coloured triangles (not very effective looking back)

I removed the labels and region text information, and the map looks like this -

Update 26 October 2019

The maps above were all made by manually drawing the curves using a pen tool. Concerned classmates told me about Illustrator's ability to create round corners, and so I redrew the map in a more sensible manner.

The final version of the schematic map is:

Major Changes:

• Added a mini-map showing Navi Mumbai in relation to Mumbai. There is a rectangle around the relevant portion, and I felt that the central hill element was a good enough link between mini Navi Mumbai and map-scale Navi Mumbai
• The Harbour Railway Line is dashed in a different way, and all major stations are marked
• I added location markers for my home and school
• Changed the colours a little bit
• Used the Ubuntu font because the combination of curved and straight lines in letters with sharp connections reminded me of the map style

That's all for now, Rishi

[dhirajdethe]

Schematic Map of Chandrapur City (Maharashtra)

Taken Google Map screenshot of my hometown Chandrapur as a reference for its schematic map.

Then Traced out the reference map in Adobe Illustrator with important landmarks of the city like Important roads coming in and going out of the city, lake, popular temples, river, bus stand, railway station, etc.

Then removed the actual reference map from background to observe the traced sketch in order to move towards abstraction of the shapes formed in tracing.

Then next I tried to make lines I traced for roads and boundaries little more straight and angles more prominent. at the same time, I realized that some part of the actual city map is showing nearby villages which are recently added into the administrative boundary of Chandrapur Municipal Corporation, and they are not popularly known as a part of a geography of Chandrapur city. therefore, I decided to make a schematic map without those parts.

Then I abstracted the boundary and important roads little more by making all lines 45 degrees or 90 degrees to the horizontal lines. the boundary shape then came out to be little symmetric, which I made perfectly symmetric later.

Made rest of the elements in the same style and added the landmarks.

Added more details like Names to the roads and some landmarks, and some colors to the map.

More details to be added further, colors could be changed.

Here is the final version of the Schematic map of Chandrapur. (Changes done: Added railway tracks, changed oval shape of fort walls to rectilinear, placed icons for important landmarks & named some of the important areas in city)

And some more fine-tuning.

The Final version

With some play with sizes and colors of Types, Iconography and some more minute detailing of geography.

[AshmiK]

Schematic map of Jamshedpur/Tatanagar Started out with screenshot of Google Map of Jamshedpur. A roughly traced the boundary along with rivers, roads, areas that were important according to me. Redrew it with just straight lines. Went back to the original trace. Decided on a shape for the city using straight lines at only 45 or 90 degrees with rounded corners of varying sizes. Used the same shape for important areas (Tata Steel and Jubilee Park). Followed the same rules for roads and rivers Things to be worked on

• Further abstraction of roads.
• Landmarks
• Labeling
• Surface treatment

Jamshedpur is a industrial region but the region around it is green. Wanted to show that but rejected the idea.

Wasn't very sure about what to do next so I decided to give my village a try while I thought about Jamshedpur's schematic.

Garhmohni

Garhmohni is a small village in Bihar which doesn't show up on Google Maps. So I searched for the nearest train station - Gauchari.

Surprisingly, along with the station, I also got the temple near my home and the playground. Since I have walked home from the station often enough, mapping the area seemed like a doable job (emphasis on seemed).

I sketched a basic diagram of the concrete road (as shown in the above map) and started marking the areas around it.

I had help from my parents (just to be sure that I was updated enough to do this). Detailed out the various areas where people lived and where crops where planted. The mentioned crops are what one would find during the summer season.

However I realized that there were gaps that I couldn't fill (the areas away from the main road and the shortcut route because I had never explored those part as I had explored the areas near my home).

So I decided to focus near my home. Sketched out (more) detailed map for the area near my home.

Added further details such as the handpumps (we don't have taps yet) and toilets (they are the most important thing).

Really wanted to hand draw this but a digital version seemed like a better option for a first attempt. Everything needs to be done (iteration of the illustrations, labeling, validation from my grand parents) but here it goes.

[akshayrpatil]

Schematic Map of Wardha city

I started out searching on google map, my city is Nagpur, and the massive amount of work has been done earlier on Nagpur Visualisation. So I decided to do this exercise with the neighbor city, Wardha. Link for Wardha map Wadha

Map tracing

Traced arterial, sub arterial roads, rail lines, water catchment area, rivers, and mid terrain areas.

rectifying it.. stepping towards schematic map...

after tracing all the element, I started rectifying it into straight lines.

Pre final stage

Mapped all the important area and Connectivity lines, As we move more towards making more schematic map the City will look like Triangular in shape

Further things to work on

1. Landmark naming
2. Road naming
3. may be more abstraction of roads

   New version

   

Final Version

[SaiAnjan]

Schematic Map of Vijayawada

Vijayawada is the capital of the newly formed state Andhra Pradesh. This is not Amaravathi but this is the primary Capital region where all the state functions happen. Vijayawada is the business capital of Andhra Pradesh and it is ranked as world's 3rd densely populated built-in urban cities. It is called as the 'Heart of Andhra Pradesh' and it is geographically located in the centre of the state. I wanted to show the prime parts of the city which makes it the important part of the state. The city has an international airport, railway station which is the busiest junction in south India and a wide access via road. A google map view of the city looks like this:

I started with a google map of the city and started outlining the main roads and highways of the city. The city consists of two main roads called Bandar Road and Eluru Road. These two are stretched along the length of the city. The city is on the banks of river Krishna, the primary source of water and electricity. The city has Prakasam barrage built on the river to control the input/outflow of river water. This acts as the water control for the city also. The city has access to Vishakhpatnam on one side and Hyderabad on the other side and finally Chennai on the other side. This makes it easy for business and travel to the other parts of the country. These have been identified in the map with an onion sheet on the top. An Inner ring road which connects the parts of the city is also identified as most of the commuting is happening on the Inner ring road.

I started with a google map tracing on an onion paper: I started seeing the two main roads forming a 'V' at the railway junction of the city. This is the beauty of this city which allows you to go anywhere from here because the Bus Stand is also here. After detailing the important locations in the city that are also connected to the V are highlighted:

Then I moved to Sketch application where I started making an isometric grid and started putting everything onto the grid and I brought a focus onto the 'V'.

But the shapes were still feeling like a regular map not giving the details that I wanted to show in the map. So I started thinking about how do I convert this detailed regular map into a schematic minimal and clean map. Once I started thinking about making the schematic view by including an isometric grid I realised that the shape of the city can be morphed into a heart shape.

I tried a heart shape by excluding not so important part of the city and thus I noticed the 'V' shaped map exactly fits into this heart. I immediately made a sketch of these locations with the roads and rail connections on the heart shape. This is the output of that:

The Final Schematic Output made in Sketch:

I tried using Maki Icon set for the map but I could only find Airport icon. I need icons for an under construction seaport and a flash icon for the power station.

Next Steps:

• [x] Telugu version of the map
• [ ] Design language can be made better
• [x] Changes according to feedback from today's class.

[harshitsatija]

Schematic Map of Rishikesh

~About Rishikesh

I was born and raised in Rishikesh and have been in the city for 17 years of my life. The city is divided mainly into two parts, i.e. residential areas and tourist spots. The city is also the entry point to the ‘Char Dham Yatra’ which makes the city populated with hotels and dharamshalas. The layout of the city has evolved to accommodate the growing number of tourists and is still evolving.

~Defining the context and users

The first step I took was to specify the target user so that the decision making process becomes easy. I classified the major tourist groups into 3 categories: coming from Airport (Dehradun side), Roadways (Mainly Haridwar side), and Walking (‘Cavars’, mainly from Chilla side). This made me figure out their entry points and their destination within the city or their route(if they are passing by).

~Map

I started out looking at both the Open Street Map and Google Maps but after spotting considerable faults in the Open Street Map, I decided to go with Google Maps as my source.

~Outlining the Major Roads

After selecting the source, the first step I took was to trace out the major roads and to discard the roads with restricted access to tourists. I collected this information from my father, who is currently living in Rishikesh. The tracing made it clear, the number of entry and exit points in the city and made it easy for me to figure out the route taken by tourists.

~Dividing the city

After the major roads were traced, the next step I took was to divide the city into two major parts, i.e. residential areas, educational/hospital areas and the tourists' hot spots. This step made me realize what the focus of the map should be and where to clear out the clutter from.

~Tracing the Visual anchor points (rivers, forests, mountains)

The next step I took was to trace out where these anchor points are and figure out how and where they interact with the users.

~Tracing out area-specific roads

After deciding on the focus spots on the map, I decided to trace out the roads which made those spots accessible and are used a lot.

~Labelling and selecting focus areas

I started labelling, with the consideration of the users in mind and what I thought is usually popular among the tourists. This step made me add popular temples, ashrams and hospitals like AIIMS.

~Abstracting the details

Next I a few sketches and simplified the roads drew with constrained angles. I could identify patterns with the forest and the rivers and tried to simplify them as well.

~Abstracting the scale and orientation

After the first step, I realized the entry and exit points. Thus, I tried to orient the map according to that. Also in this step, I enlarged the focus areas and reduced the areas which were not in the context. The rivers also I tried to abstract it out more and space it according to focus areas.

Next

Using Icons Changed Bridge highlight Used a typographic hierarchy Trying to bring the feel of the place as a valley with appropriate colours

[sargamprakash]

Dibrugarh, Assam

I tell people I’m from Hyderabad and for this assignment too, Hyderabad was my first choice. But the sheer size of the city and its numerous landmarks made it very challenging for me to create a faithful schematic map in the duration of two days. So for the purpose of this assignment, I chose Dibrugarh, a popular town on the banks of the river Brahmaputra, and more importantly, my birthplace.

Google Maps

I wanted to work with OpenStreetMap, but the data there was very inaccurate so I had to resort to using Google Maps.

Tracing and Orientation

I traced the railway line in green, the national highway in black, and 3 other prominent roads in grey. The administrative border of the town is in red.

The first thing to notice is that the Brahmaputra is in the north and that is where the town ends. The roads and railways extend south and connect to other locations. Instead of this orientation, I thought it would be better to have the river at the bottom so that there's a baseline reference from where the roads can diverge. So 3,2,1, flip!

Now we have an oval territory with diverging lines. I could work with that.

Abstraction

I decided to keep tracing the roads and with each iteration, make them more and more abstract.

This is probably one step too far because the roads lose their organic nature and it starts looking like abstract art instead of a map. Something curvier is desirable because it also helps distinguish between the roads and railways in places where they overlap.

So after tracing the second stage in illustrator, and changing the colours, we get

I added a few labels and a couple of icons from the Maki icon set.

These are some of the points of interest that I had chosen to be represented on the map. I will eventually add all of them to the schematic and some more.

The future

• [ ] Add more roads

• [ ] Add more points of interest

• [ ] Maintain readability

2nd Draft

Better orientation, added river direction, fixed train lines, reduced curves

Adding more labels, points, icons,

3rd Draft

I changed the background to a tint of green to bring out the greenery of Assam. I made efforts to keep the labels consistent at a top-right corner of the icons, and added a thin black stroke along with white shadows to make them more prominent. I've also added certain grey areas which roughly show the population accumulation pattern in the town.

[kaishwary08]

Bhopal: City of Lakes The idea was to create a guide for First-time traveler to Bhopal for a 2 days tour around the city.

Start Point was to Locate the sites covering Bhopal's history and places worth seeing. Bhopal is also the nearest City to UNESCO sites of Sanchi Stupa and Bhimbetka Caves, while view from and around Kerwa Dam is mesmerising. It's interesting to see that the upcoming tourist spots are around the periphery of the Upper Lake (Bada Talav).

Then started to abstract it with squares and straight lines over the map to not to lose the important roads and sites, that might be too clustered.

A step towards the final draw. Tried using Rounded rectangles, Straight lines at 0, 45, 90 degrees, while maintaining Neutral colors. Currently, the name tags seem very raw. I guess I could work on the typography and cropping of the image, while also changing the colors.

Feedback: The graphic seemed a bit too abstract and has lost most of the important information like connecting roads, railway station, etc. Canvas looked too empty. Also, the representation didn't fit well in terms of graphic representation. Nomenclature of roads missing. Symbolic conditioning missing.

Based on the feedback, I decided to start with the process yet again. Tracing the path of lakes, gardens, major roads, and minor roads.

Then I decided to place it in a 0, 45, 90-degree grid. Since most of the tourist spots are very closely spaced around the Upper lake, square grids would situate closer points in a diagonal, spacing them out giving clarity in terms of perception.

Roads, Lakes, Gardens were traced according to the decided grid system. Hierarchy was provided on the basis of color and stroke thickness.

Addition of Nomenclature, suggestions for visit on the terms of time management were added. Used Open Sans as font,. Font treatment for the first word was Regular whereas the second word was Light. It was done so because second word of most of the places underuse describes the place in itself.

The next version included iconography on top of color coding to provide an idea about the place. Angles for the roads were resolved.

The background color for the icons seemed to overpower the icons. The idea as mentioned above was to make a schematic of a 2-day tour for a first-time traveler to Bhopal, which was added to the map, along with suggestions for other nearby places to visit. In the final iteration, legend for icons was added, and the icons themselves were colored instead of previous background influenced color.

Places of Improvement

1. Suggestions for timing could be added to the suggested places.
2. With added content, the whole map looks a bit more cluttered yet clean.
3. Icons have details, which may not be distinctly visible to at zoomed out level.

[mayura7]

I've stayed in Pune since age 6, that makes me a 22 yr old Pune-ite. Naturally I'm extremely fond of my city. Whenever I'm away from my beloved city, I'm looking around for people from Pune. The first time was when I went to Ahmedabad to study for my graduation. During introductions, some of my batchmates said they were from Pune and my ears picked it up! But to my dismay none of them were from 'my' pune! The distances from our homes were so large that it was a pain to make vacation plans to meet up in spite of being in the same city! Pune has grown a lot in the past 10 years. 'My' Pune is this limited area which can be termed as old pune. I thought it would be interesting to put the blooming Pune city on the map- citing the broad areas and giving everyone a framework of how close/ apart all the Pune-ites are!

Since I was looking at a huge scale, I had to stitch 3 screenshots from Google maps together. I was utterly bewildered because this is how it looked like.

I started out by marking the places, areas, roads that I thought were important. I realized there were 4 major highways and the river Mutha that sort of enclosed Pune from all directions and within. I mapped a few close to heart places and my home to mark the old 'my' pune.

Removing the Google map reference seemed wise at this point as it was cluttering the focus area.

It still seemed a lot confusing (By the way, this is exactly how I felt when people say they are from Pune and I can't figure out exactly from where). So I took it on paper and simply drew a free form of the river and the roads.

I saw that the Mutha river makes a 'Y' shape if the map is rotated a bit to the left. Distinct forms started emerging as I traced this drawing. I also skewed the roads to make it more symmetric.

Now I could see the areas located distinctly near some highway and could establish their relationship from one another. I decided to take the work back to illustrator to refine this using some visual metaphor. (Work in Progress)

The blossoming pune metaphor didn't work out that great!

So started with a different style keeping in mind the food-joint/ meeting places. Need to add the places yet but the areas are mapped according to the spicy/ sweet customer service!

There was confusion regarding the icons I had used. The chilly was considered as an icon for spicy food place. I decided to go in that direction and jotted down the spicy places I knew in Pune. Taking that further I decided to mark some places famous for desserts, some to visit and the lovely gardens in Pune. The zones for good and bad customer service were marked in light grey dotted lines with speech bubbles.

The colours seemed too bright and the top border looked too strong so played around a bit. So I decided to take those down. I shared it with my friends in Pune and they didn't understand the context of customer service joke. Those dialogue boxes were disturbing the information anyway so I felt it would be better to remove that too. Finally, this is the final map!

If I had more time, I would render it in Photoshop adding some local landmarks and some more places around. It was a fun exercise that has helped me to understand the structure of my hometown better!

[SONIBHAWNA]

Hisar

I have tried to map all the sectors which are located at very different locations and main roads connecting and railway junction. [

](url) Point of interest are added as pins. After marking all the important areas I found how dislocated places are close to each other and can be represented in a different shape without loosing the roads connectivity and distance wise nearby places.

[akshathyanki]

This is the detailed map of Bhilai which looks very messy.

This is the rough outline of main roads of Bhilai where i outlined all tha main roads and the national highway for easy tracking.

This is the simplified version of the map where the pink shaded shapes indicate the famous places to hang out, the blue boxes indicate water bodies, the green boxes indicate parks, the gray line indicates main roads, red line indicates railway line and the black line indicates the national highway.

I tried to make the map such that it looks clean as well as all the important places are marked. I also made it such they know what they can find in these places and go there as per their liking.

[gyanl]

I have lived in Delhi all my life, and so when I zoomed out at a city level on Google Maps I could see markers of places that I've added to my map over the years - friend's houses, a nice park, the bus stop near my college, an exam center. It was a little nostalgic.

I realised that I would need to focus on a part of the Delhi NCR region, so I zoomed in a little more and decided to focus on central Delhi, which I'm most familiar with. I like spending winter days in outdoor spaces, and so I decided to focus my map on green spaces.

I traced the Delhi Ridge forest and the Yamuna river to ground the map in two of the larger natural features of the city, and marked dots for parks, gardens, forests and some of the places of interest that I like and recommend to people. I also marked the larger areas surrounding Delhi, so I could take a call on how much of them to represent or not represent.

Since I mostly use the metro to get around in the city, I also decided to look at the Delhi Metro map, which is a schematic map of the various metro lines in the city.

Using this combined information, I took this into Sketch, and started tracing areas using only 45 or 90 degree lines. After marking some points of interest, this is what the map looks like.

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Todo

• Add more spots towards South Delhi
• Fix iconography

[aishaanam]

Kanpur (Cawnpore)

I am born and brought up in the city of Kanpur (Cawnpore) - an Educational & Industrial hub, situated at the banks of river Ganga.

At first glance, I could form an image of what could be the possible shapes & composition could evolve, my focus went on the Swastik symbol, but it didn't work well. So, I went by first demarcating the boundary, roads & the River, which fare the major identity of the city. And then refining it, by retaining the most important things like National Highways, Green Park Stadium, Zoo, Ordinance Factory.

Abstraction

Transforming the chaotic city into simple geometry.

3D Version - which didnt work -

Trying dark colour scheme -

Eventually coming onto- Less is More

the final Map is an attempt to minimalise the Map in terms of relevant information and the visuals. Fun ELement : Don't forget to spot the names of the Railway Station, Bus station & the Airport.

Giving little depth to the water bodies - I dunno if its a good Idea

[GauriTillu]

I was brought up in Mumbai and attended my school here. So I have been here for 15 years of my life. I moved to Pune after that only to come back to Mumbai after 6 years.

For this exercise, I started with a map of Mumbai

Traced it...

I tried to differentiate the land, sea and the forest and also pinned the places of my interest...

The next step was to lose a little detail and try and stick to only certain degrees of angles...

Further abstrction...

Next steps would be

• Typography and weight of lines
• Adding a little detail to make it a little more usable

[eeshani]

Kolkata : The City of Joy

I have spent most of my childhood here, going to places every weekend with my parents. The schematic map represents the places that resonates with me the most.

Step 1: Firstly I took a snap of a map of Kolkata

Step 2: I dotted out the places of interest in Kolkata and the routes that connect them along with the Hooghly/Ganga River

Step 3: I plotted the route from my paper sketch on the map snap to visualize the exact form of the roads connecting the points.

Step 4: I started exploring schematic forms on paper for representing the map depending on the importance of the places and features of the city.

Step 5: Finalised on one of the ideas and started digitalising it.

Step 6:

Added Icons to get a feel of it. Not final ones. Need to make it more similar as they appear random.

This is still a work in progress!

Next Step:

• Adding metrolines and tramways
• Adding the point of interests
• Adding icons or elements symbolising the place.

[pbshgthm]

Schematic map of Hosur

Google map view

Traced map

Boundaries and roads are aligned to 8 axis direction

Further abstracted

Trying out dark theme

Final style

[rohanjhunja]

Pune Proposed Metro Map

Pune was once considered a small city where you could reach anywhere in the city under half an hour. Most residents in the city go about on two-wheeler or there's always the PMT bus. Roads have been the most important point of reference for Punekars. With the city sprawling out to areas like Pimpri-Chinchwad, Hinjewadi, Hadapsar and Undri the map is not limited to the major roads of Pune anymore. Travel times have more than doubled but the metro project under construction proposes to bring the city closer once more. This poses a completely new way of seeing the city on the back of the new metro lines.

1. Map displays Highways, Road, Rail and 3 proposed phases of the metro

2. Re-orienting to highlight traffic movement: choices between Baner to Hadapsar vs Nigdi to Kothrud.. different commuters would be advantaged.

3. Skewing the map to enlarge the core city

4. Constraining paths

5. Next steps: Phase 3, Roads, BRTS, Points of Interest using Sightsmap, bridges

6. Map to navigate across stations on the first two lines. As the Metro map was made to be used in hand, dense areas are covered by the names of stations. Adding information of landmarks and important sub-areas is difficult at this scale. This version of the map became very text-dependent.

[avyayrkashyap]

Hey! So I'm from Bangalore. I thought long and hard about what it is about Bangalore that people would want to see, and the usual suspects came up with Kora, Indiranagar, Church street, etc. So I proceeded to sketch out the entirety of Bangalore.

The main outer ring road and the roads leading to Kora and IRN are in black and I thought I could use the rail tracks as as a reference. But this unfortunately isn't how anyone sees Bangalore. Also, I couldn't quite think about anything that I would want people to see within the various localities. So what was the point of the map? Zilch.

I decided to rethink what I would want the person to see. What part of Bangalore would I really want to show that would maybe change the notion that Bangalore is just good weather and traffic.

I looked up places that are of interest in the micro regions. MG Road, Church Street, St.Marks Road had the most potential with various entertainment centres within close proximity of each other. This notion also comes from my experiences and the way I choose to spend time with my friends in Bangalore. Also with multiple tech parks, it was hard to find places of interest that included things other than food and drinks.

I went ahead with mapping the centre of Bangalore. Sketched out the area as is to start with.

This afforded points of interests such as Blossoms and Higginbothams for book lovers and the Art Gallery, Museums, Vidhan Soudha for the history and monument lovers. And this being Bangalore, of course there's great food everywhere you look!

I tried to initially work with the basic shape. Tracing it out, and looking at the basic shape.

Tried some initial geometricisation without forcing it too much. Tried to do some primitive labelling. Red for food, yellow for drinks, purple for book lovers, and blue for places of interest.

More geometricisation followed and the I decided to help orient the people with respect to Church Street, St.Marks Road and MG Road by turning it slightly.

Started adding the labels, some background, and the MG Road metro to give the users some more context to where they might be.

Updated the typography, used Alegreya instead of Futura. This was for two reasons. One, Futura had barely any contrast and this did not work well with the map whose roads also followed a similar scheme. Two, Alegreya felt more Bangalore, with its slightly oldish serifs adding some character and class. This, I felt, suited Central Bengaluru a lot more, appealing to the Bengaluru part and the Bangalore roots the centre so gracefully embodies.

Added a legend, and the other details such as road names, and the places, to finish what I consider to be a first iteration of a schematic of central Bengaluru. I'm sure there are tons of flaws, both with the kind of contrast I have used and the type selection, but I hope through greater exposure to these over the duration of the Data Viz module, I will be able to improve the map.

[ameyanikose]

Bhilai

Making an outline of the map and marking the important roads and the highways passing through the town.

Abstracting the roads.

Rounding sharp edges, marking the sectors and the crossroads.

Adding the railway lines passing through the town.

Adding icons and places of interest to the map.

Adding Localities and further detailing the map.

A zoomed-in version.

[harsuyash]

LUCKNOW

Tracing it out

Idea for Abstraction

Lucknow is not an industrial area but a cultural one. I have tried to reflect that by avoiding harsh black lines and labels and softening the color and maintaining some curvilinearity.

I have also added the Iconic Rumi Darwaza as an icon at its location

Adding the labels

Increasing contrast for area labels but keeping it subtle and delicate like Lucknavi

[venkatrajam]

The concept of minimalism had lacklustre beginnings as an obscure art movement where it was used to describe art works that were minimalistic in the amount of actual ‘art’ they showed. It was a rejection of the extremely subjective works of abstract expressionism of the time. The minimalists believed, by distilling a sculpture, painting or subject down to its bare essentials, the art can showcase its true meaning. In short, it was about minimizing the artefact/object in favour of the subject.

The clarity, simplicity and efficiency that minimalism promised appealed to architects of the time, who favoured stripping down the building forms and interiors to their bare essentials to focus on the functional efficiency, resulting in the idea of ‘less is more’ in design. Production efficiency (mass manufacturing, construction) further drove the style. However, design minimalism was about minimizing the subject in favour of the artefact/object.

The unique aesthetic that minimalism produced soon became vogue in the applied visual arts (typography, graphic design, photography, films etc.) and continues to be used rather indiscriminately to this day to the point where the style is, at best -- sterile, lacking emotional power or personality, generic and boring; and at worst -- an easy way out for lazy designers.

The usefulness of minimalism in the design of digital products is but a natural reaction to the limitations and affordances of the medium. It made sense to optimise a lot of aspects related to information and interaction taking into account the limitations of display (size/resolution), processing capacity (human/device), users, context, and so on. The so called flat design or material design exhibited a minimalist aesthetic as a result. Here I want you to pay attention to the direction of causality, and appreciate how the minimalist aesthetic came into being as a by-product of legitimately good design decisions.

So it pains me to see another design using sans serif type, random choice of indistinguishable contrasts, monochromatic colour schemes, pastel backdrops, flat imagery etc., for no good reason other than it is currently trendy to do so. For a certain kind of solutions (new, internet native, good at Instagram) the look appears almost non-negotiable. The homogeneity suffocates me.

The objective of the map abstraction exercise is to understand the essential character of a city/town, make careful choices about hierarchy and importance of the information units, encode them that reflects a layered complexity, and yet functional and beautiful. It is a geo-information design exercise that makes use of graphic design as a tool. Many treated it only as a graphic design exercise. Worse, some of you treated it as an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to render a minimal aesthetic that is devoid of any meaning. Simple yes, simplistic no.

[shraddhadhodi]

Tarapur Atomic Power Station Township NPCIL's TAPS colony, as well as the BARC colony, resides near the Maharashtra-Gujarat border. I have tried to make the schematic for the important places of the two townships which are interconnected. Step 1: Took the map from the Google MAPS

Step 2&3: Understanding the location and the area of the three colonies, and started understanding the places as well as the layout of the connection between the places.

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6:

Step 7:

[seemskk]

Schematic Map of Kuttanadu

The backwater region of Kuttanadu in Kerala is one piece of land I've been so passionate about for a long time, partly for my ancestral roots and rest for its geographical peculiarities. You cannot call it a land, rather reclaimed piece of land in the delta of Vemband lake. One of the few places in the world where farming is carried on around 1.2 to 3.0 metres (4 to 10 ft) below sea level. Four of Kerala's major rivers, the Pamba, Meenachil, Achankovil and Manimala flow into the region.

The interesting part of mapping Kuttanad is its vague boundaries which otherwise is not clearly defined. So my attempt was based on the following maps from google and one of the research papers on Kuttanadu.

Final Schematic map

[ameerhamza99]

JAMMU

1. Starting with studying the map on OpenStreet Maps and Google Maps. Then marking importants routes and landmarks through the city.

2. Identifying routes which are more important than the others and highlighting them. Importance based on the extent of connection through the city and access to other rooutes.

3. Abstracting rputes into simple straight lines and checking connections. Preserving location of landmarks according to the new layout.

4. Further simplifying the shape of the map and alignment of lines to give a more understandable and perceivable view.

5. Marking other landmarks and areas. Refining.

6. Insetring icons and labels for landmarks. Coding with colours.

7. Marking areas of the city, routes to other cities, refining and scaling text, and final tweaks.

[PGPagar]

Nashik:

Tracing the map out

Abstracting the map

last step

[aaditya149]

Delhi : Neighbouring region of my house The Idea is to make a schematic map of the neighbouring region with respect to my house, showing places that can be visited, providing some idea regarding transport using metro as it is a very important part of the life of people in Delhi.

1) Traced the original map by omitting few unnecessary details.

2) Increased contrast to get more clarity during ideation

3) Decided to omit road network on focus mainly on metro service and national highways. Decided on which landmarks to focus on. My House is now at the centre of the map.

4) Abstracted the map, omitted details, structured the elements.

5) Further structured and abstracted the map, refined the information, removed the dark background since there are no more white roads in the map anymore. Added a legend.