November 2, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
Click image above to enlarge
An Australian designer (living in America) has taken it upon himself to create this great looking map of the Eisenhower Interstate System with an obvious homage to the classic London Underground map.
You can read more about Cameron’s map design here.
October 28, 2009 @ 1:30 am
Conde Nast Traveler’s 2009 Readers Choice Awards just awarded the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, KY the #1 hotel in the United States (and #6 worldwide). Pentagram is obviously excited about the announcement because they helped design the identity, graphics, and signage for the hotel which no doubt goes very well with the contemporary look of the hotel.
I’ve never heard of the 21c Museum Hotel until just now but it certainly sounds like a place I’d love to stay in the future. With only 90 rooms available and an incredibly posh interior with luxurious amenities, it already sounds like I’ll have to save up quite a bit just to stay for one night.
September 24, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
Stephen Von Worley over at Weather Sealed created this amazing visualization of McDonald’s locations in the United States after going on a road trip this past summer. He wanted to see how far he could get from the franchise establishment in any location in the contiguous United States. His research led to this image which shows that no matter where you are in the US, a McDonald’s restaurant really isn’t that far away.
He says:
As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid. East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia.
For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer.
Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!
Great work Steve!
August 13, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
In a move I can hardly understand, the Customs and Border Protection agency is choosing to dismantle a brand-new, beautifully designed sign at the United States-Canada border because they believe it attracts “undue attention” and risks the lives of the employees working at the border station.
The sign in question, consisting of large yellow letters that spell out “UNITED STATES”, are hidden partially by the architecture of the border station which was designed by Smith-Miller & Hawkinson. The building itself will remain standing and serve as the border station between Canada and the U.S. and it is just the large signage that will be taken down. I don’t understand how this is going to make it safer for employees and less conspicuous to terrorists. I mean, could this building be anything other than a border station?
Fast Company has a few more words with the designer of the sign, Michael Bierut, and why he thinks it’s being dismantled by the government.
August 13, 2009 @ 12:34 am
Australia’s famed Tim Tam chocolate cookies are coming back to the US!!
Earlier this year, Pepperidge Farm tested sales of Tim Tam cookies at Target stores and pulled the product off shelves at the end of March. Now, after months of missing Tim Tams here in the States, Pepperidge Farm is set to unveil the wonderful Australian cookie once again sometime in October.
The wait will soon be over and Tim Tam cookies will be had by all! Thanks Cecilia!
