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Interstate Diagram Print Sample!, originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

First print sample of my Interstate Diagram poster came in today. This one is from an online on-demand printer - I love the size (36" x 24"), and the colors look great as well, nice and bright! I could even make the type a little bit smaller at this reproduction size, which could neaten things up a bit. Still waiting on a couple of different printers before I make a final decision on which way to go.

Prints will be for sale soon - let me know if you're interested by emailing camgbooth -AT- gmail -DOT- com!

UPDATE: Posters - in both 25" x 17" and 36" x 24" sizes - are now available for purchase here.

Posted in: art, chaosboy, design, driving, usa on November 20, 2009 at at 12:43:00 PM 0 comments    

Eisenhower Interstate System in the style of H.C. Beck's London Underground Diagram, originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

UPDATE: Prints of this diagram are now available for sale here.

Here's the result of my latest "designing stuff because I feel like it" phase: a map of America's comprehensive Interstate highway system in the form of a metro or subway map.

I came across a very different take of this on the internet last week, an incredibly simplified, very rectangular (and very orange!) diagram by Chris Yates. Many viewers of this map were calling it a "Beck style map" (after H.C. Beck, the originator of the London Underground Diagram) or a "subway style map", but on the whole, I disagreed with that point of view.

The best examples of subway maps use strong colour codes for separate lines and a clear hierarchy of detail (interchanges, major stations, minor stations, etc.) to convey a lot of information rapidly and clearly. And while there is some degree of geographical distortion in most metro maps (the centre of London in Beck's diagram is greatly enlarged compared to the outer suburbs), there should always be an underlying sense of the relationship between destinations in reality and on the map.

So that's what I set out to create - a simplified diagram of the Interstate system in the style of the best transport diagrams. Armed with Google Earth, Google Maps, Wikipedia, a gridded pad of paper and pen, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Chris Yates' map and another excellent map by Rebecca Brown that I found on Flickr, I began my Herculean task.

Early on, I decided that the "major" highways (those divisible by 5) would form the framework of my diagram. These would be thicker of line than the minor roads, and would be distinctively colour coded. Their termini would also be called out in a bolder fashion than the other roads. This was done relatively painlessly, with very little rejigging required to make all the major intersections line up. I was surprised at how much this simple grid already looked like America's borders, which gave me great hope that things were going to work out well.

Then it was onto fitting the minor highways into this grid. Even though these roads don't have specific colour codes, I strove to give some extra information in the shades of grey used: a darker gray was used for even-numbered roads (running from west to east; lower numbers to the south, higher numbers to the north) and a lighter grey for the odd-numbered roads (running from north to south; lower numbers to the west, higher numbers to the east). Each road has its number marked at each terminus, with a full key at the bottom of the map for cross-reference. A bit of tweaking was required here and there to make every road and name fit neatly (it gets a bit crowded in the eastern states!), but in general everything worked out beautifully. I even managed to show concurrency of Interstates by running the "lines" next to each other, just as they do on subway maps.

Then I added the Great Lakes, coastline, borders and the key. Done!

All up, this project took around a week to complete. There's still some little tweaks and fixes to make, and I feel sure that road aficionados across the country will be only too ready to point out my errors as time goes by, but overall, I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out!

Some oddities: I-99 breaks the grid by being placed to the WEST of I-95. Apparently, the number was written into Section 332 of the National Highway Designation Act of 1995 by Bud Shuster, then-chair of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the bill's sponsor, and the representative of the district through which the highway runs. Why? Maybe he thought 99 was a cool number for his local highway?

I-97 is to the east of I-95 (as it should be), but it is the only Interstate that does not intersect with any other. In fact, all of I-97 lies in one little county just outside Baltimore.

Oh, and here's a direct link to a much BIGGER version (more pixels than can fit on your screen!)

Posted in: chaosboy, design, driving, united states on October 29, 2009 at at 9:13:00 PM 1 comments    

So I finally got off my butt and went and got myself an Oregon Driver's License today. I just realised that there was no reason not to get it apart from procrastination. While procrastination can be fun, it was time to join the real world... so at 8am in the morning, Christine and I headed off to the grandly titled Portland Drive Test Center... really just a ginormous DMV.

For some reason, this is the only DMV office in the entire Portland metropolitan area where you can actually do the drive test... totally unlike Sydney, where every RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) office does it.

Anyway, of all the hoops I've had to jump through in my quest to lead an American Life™, this was probably the easiest of all. Sign in, fill out some paperwork, show my Green Card, pay the test fee of $9 and then go for a drive. The tester was a pretty relaxed guy and I really didn't feel nervous at all. And drive tests don't really agree with me – I failed back in Australia five times before I got my license. I kept getting the same drive tester, and for some reason, he just didn't like me and failed me for more and more ridiculous reasons each time. On the sixth time, I got someone else, and – surprise, surprise – I passed!

So I made a couple of little mistakes in the test – I stopped too far into the intersection at a couple of stop signs (a matter of inches!), and turned into the middle lane when turning left into a multi-lane one way street (you have to turn into the left-most lane). Nowhere near enough to fail me, anyway! I was slightly annoyed that after diligently practicing reverse parks all week, I didn't actually need to perform one in the test – I just had to pull in to an empty curb as if parking, and then reverse two car lengths in a smooth manner. No other cars anywhere near me!

Back at the DMV, I paid my $59 for an eight-year license (showing my Green Card again), and then had my photo taken by another staff member for my license (third time for the Green Card!), which will be mailed to me in the next week or so.

Road trip, anyone?

Posted in: chaosboy, driving, portland on April 28, 2009 at at 9:58:00 PM 1 comments