Earlier this fall I learned about an amazing company called Mapbox.  Mapbox is an exciting company that has created an online platform that allows users to build custom maps.  They're really on the cutting edge of bringing meaningful maps to everyone.  Be sure to checkout their website https://www.mapbox.com/ I also wanted to post a link to a radio show, which the CEO of Mapbox discusses the future of interactive and custom maps.  http://thekojonnamdishow.org/audio-player?nid=24504

For Christmas one of my presents was a book called The Best American Infographics 2013.  This book is compilation of infogrpahics that appeared in a variety of sources  in 2013.  Here's a link with more information about the book http://garethcook.net/best-american-infographics/  Inforgraphics are a visual representation of data.  Basic examples include graphs, charts and maps.  This book is full of all sorts of graphics, but the ones I find the most interesting are the maps.  If I could I'd share every map from this book, but for now I'll settle with a few of the ones that caught my attention.

                                 States of Equal Population    

                                                             Neil Freeman

http://fakeisthenewreal.org/

This map comes from Neil Freeman, an artist and urban designer in New York City.  He has a lot of interesting maps on his website (don't be surprised if more of his work shows up on a later post).  I have often thought about what it wold be like to form new state boundaries and what criteria would be used for new boarders.  Freeman criteria is very simple each state should have an equal population.  I'm also intrigued by some of the names he uses.  If you want more details of how he created this map feel free to visit his site.