Legible London Maps
Legible London Maps
Out of context: Reply #12
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- raf0
I went to a lecture on them by Tim Fendley some two years ago, he explained the philosophy behind the maps.
They studied how people perceive places and relations between them and it turns out most people suck at judging distances, even in areas they know. For example, people "think" one way is shorter than another while it's not true. Another thing, people don't really have good mental maps of areas they frequent or that they pass through often—they mostly remember landmarks and main intersections, can omit whole blocks when recalling from memory.
This was just about the time TFL printed Tube maps without the Thames and people got completely lost—the river was a major landmark Londoners used to build their mental maps of the city.