With a smartphone, Google Maps, and two fingers, you can summon pretty much any map you want, from a wide view of the seven continents to the handful of blocks immediately surrounding your house. The problem, of course, is that none of those maps can ever be bigger than your screen. Multitouch maps give us cartographic omnipotence and a lousy 4" canvas on which to enjoy it. Map², like other paper maps, gives you a bit more room to stretch out. But the clever design also borrows one key feature from its digital brethren: It zooms in as you unfold it.
>As it happens, the idea actually predated Google Maps.
The Map² is a little bit like one of those Jacob's Ladder-style wallets, in that it always has one more face than you thought was possible. It starts as a compact, 4" square; the reverse shows a tiny overview of the city it covers. Opening it up like a book reveals a map of public transit. Unfolding it again brings you to the standard view, an 8" by 8" square map of the city you're in. Then, the magic: unfold any corner of that map, and you instantly get a detailed view of the area it covers–a zoomed-in look suitable for street-level navigation.
The map was created by Anne Stauche, a UX consultant based in the UK. As it happens, the idea actually predated Google Maps altogether. As a student project, Stauche designed an early digital map for an information kiosk at the Expo 2000 World Fair, in Germany, allowing visitors to zoom in to certain areas of a public park as they desired. At the time, the possibility of handheld digital maps was still a ways off, so Stauche turned to recreating the experience with paper. In short order, she devised a folding system that accommodated her vision.
Stauche showed off the first complete version of the design–a map of London–in 2010, and it promptly made waves across the web. Now, after a yearlong stint at Paypal and a lengthy wait to secure a patent for the design, Stauche is trying to raise funds on Kickstarter to produce the maps in greater quantities. She's already finalized maps of London and Berlin, with one for New York City in the works. An online poll will determine the next city she tackles.
Mass producing the maps is something of a complex process, Stauche explains. The design requires precise perforation and die-cutting, and each map must be hand-folded. And figuring out how each new city fits into the Map²'s square-within-a-square design is itself a challenge. "Relevant areas of a city are not always next to each other," Stauche points out. "Making a long skinny island like Manhattan work on the squared format of the map is quite a different design challenge than designing a map of London. Designing a zoomable map of Tokyo is a completely different story."
Sure, you could say that even a 4" window into Google's all-knowing map brain is enough to outmode paper maps forever. But there is something to say for the built-in imprecision of the analog version. Think of how many serendipitous discoveries are lost in an age when we know how to get from point A to point B with satellite-guided precision. Think of how many restaurants and rest stops and and book stores go unhappened upon. Of course, there's another advantage inherent in Stauche's design: The Map² will never run out of batteries.
