What is it?
It is the process of simultaneously combining conceptual art and design traditions with conventional mapping processes. This can be achieved by using a visible city or area and manifesting its non-visual urban characteristics by separating its various characteristics into organised layers.
Examples Explained
Grouping Amenities
This map is pinpointing key amenities and areas of interest with an area. The creator is using a black dot to connect these spaces into groups. The key amenities are visual areas, whereas their grouping is not something that will normally meet the eye, An additional layer is a green space and not green space within the urban setting. This layer may be to illustrate the relationship between key amenities, their groups and their association to soft and harder landscaped areas within the town.
Agricultural Overlays
This map has an initial underlay of key vehicular and pedestrian routes. Overlayed above are key access routes and their various types, for example, an equestrian path to the bottom left corner in a deep purple. A third layer is key agricultural spots within the town, for example, a cattle farm, market points and water sources. This method also uses a mixture of visible characteristics to formulate non-visual assumptions between the various uses and their interconnected routes.
Minimal Streets
This map is different to those above. Its layers are obvious and somewhat simple. Layer 1 is the roads, Layer 2 is two key points of interest and Layer 3 are the spaces in between that the creator does not want us to focus on. They have used two colours to be intentional about what our focus should be. Travel, food and how to get from one or the other.
Journey Collage
At first glance, this image does not appear to be an obvious mapping. It's style is explorative and uses the tool of collating to depict a journey and what one may find along that route. These elements along the route are visual elements the creator has identified using a camera or cuttings. However, its connections are non-visual and only made apparent when outlaid with the intention on the page. The greyed out, discoloured format of the collage elements on the white void background is striking and an artistic approach
Combined Data
This mapping diagram introduces the use of a graph to further overlay and conclude on its findings. It also uses photographs and an OS map to illustrate the combination of visual routes, distances and imagery to reach the conclusion of how the characteristics of the main site relate to others in close and further proximity.
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