Note: As September comes to a close so does Philadelphia month. There will be a couple more posts today and tomorrow before I return to my normal weekly schedule.
This one is personal. Several years ago I was working with a Philly-based computer programmer and an artist to create a map of bookstores in Philadelphia. We put together lists, artwork and I made a few mock up maps but we never got much interest from the store owners. Apparently someone else did because the Philadelphia Bookstore Map is now a reality. A creation of artist Henry Crane (I don't know him) and the booksellers (unlike us he got them to buy into the project), the map succeeds pretty well while incorporating some similar artwork to what we were going for-images of the stores and some local sites.
As a disclaimer, I have not yet seen the paper copy, only what is available on the web page and on Instagram. It looks like there is an inset map (not shown online) of the stores on South Street, a good way of the solving the density problem we also faced.
A few minor points of criticism. I would have muted the background map to make the points stand out more though he could have also done that using bolder point colors. I'm not a big fan of the overly Google-looking teardrop shapes but they work fine here. The colors for different categories of stores could also be more distinct.
One of the best things about this is that in the online version there is a page to access sub-pages for each store by clicking on the bookstore drawings.
I chose this image of Bindlestiff Books because that is one of the stores we visited on our journey. One last nice detail - he used one of my favorite Rittenhouse Square statues from my childhood, Billy the goat on the cover.
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| via Instagram |
1 comment:
Just discovered this blog on feedly geography blogs. Thumbs up. I don't even know where to start reading.
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