Part 1 – Observation
Observation Area – Old Town Pasadena
Observation Note – Idea Sketch
Initial Forces – Representative of forces that affect the space
Part 2 – Forces and Base maps
Old Pasadena is the shopping/business district of Pasadena, a very classic and diverse area located just three miles from of my home. This old town area features various activities for local residents, tourists, families and business people alike: shopping, restaurants, outdoor cafes, historic sites, schools, offices, and residential area. Based on my observation I found few tangible/intangible forces that influence this space that seemed very intriguing to me.
All forces
[ Tangible Forces ]
Retail & Restaurants District
Historic & Art District
Business & Office District
Prominent Residential District
Metro Line
[ Intangible Forces ]
Traffic Area (Slow-Fast)
Scents (Unpleasant-fragrant-food scents)
Retail & Restaurants District
The outdoor malls and dining area are the main attraction of Old Town Pasadena. The outdoor area includes varieties of foods, fashion stores, and main electronic brands. Most of the stores are located in lower/west side of the old town, and this is the heaviest traffic area within the Old Pasadena.
Historic & Art District
Old Town is a designated historic district of the Pasadena. It inherits the traditional heritage buildings such as City Hall and the museums.
Residential District
Old Pasadena has unique/contemporary apartment style condos. Most of the residential area are located on the lower side of Old Town. While close to work, residents can play in a vibrant urban setting and have access to all of the modern conveniences.
Business & Office District
The art schools/financial/tech companies are gathered around the east side of Old Town Pasadena. The office district houses many businesses that also contribute to the economy of restaurant businesses around them.
Metro Line
The Gold Line metro is passing by the Old Pasadena. It also connects East side of Los Angeles to Downtown and East LA and offers an easy means of transportation to East LA residents.
Traffic Area
The traffic of retail stores/restaurant area is significantly higher than the rest of areas such as office, metro, or park area. What I mean by traffic force is the indication of the human and car simultaneously.
Scents Range
The sense of smell is strongly influenced human’s memory/experience in general. I found it interesting that every street has very different smells (i.e: stinky smell near parking structure; delicious smell near the restaurant; strong perfume smell in the outdoor mall etc) and it affects the way I remember the moments in Old Pasadena.
Part 3(v.1) – Map
Part 3(revised) – Final Map
I made some changes based on feedbacks. I really appreciate your valuable feedbacks!
- Since yellow of the traffic and retail force colors are similar, I changed the traffic color to red+orange.
- Changed the squiggly lines(scents forces) to the dot pattern.
- Since the range of scents wasn’t clear, I combined all scents to one.
- Created the map size bigger, since the previous map was smaller in comparison to the external map.
- Added the scale and a compass on the top.
- Removed unnecessary patterns.
The decisions behind the colors/pattern choice for various forces.
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Yellow for retail & dining area: I chose yellow to show the happiness and positivity of people who came to shopping and eat brunch/dinner in Old Pasadena.
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Magenta for the residential area: I personally believe magenta feels very young and creative. The majority of residential demographic in this area are young, creative, or professional people who work in the creative industry.
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Cyan for office & school area: Cyan(Bluish colors) often associated with ‘truthful’ and ‘formal’ which aligns with the serious office/business.
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Red+orange circle pattern for the traffic indication: I simplified the traffic indication from blurry to circle icons with various sizes to represent a clearer picture of traffic. It also indicates the dynamics of traffic.
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Black dot pattern for the scents: Since scent is an intangible force, I wanted to separate scents from other tangible forces. Using pattern overlap on the solid color is how I am able to distinguish between tangible and intangible forces.
Final JPG
Great work Eon! Love the design considerations in your mapped outcome of experiences and forces. I’m curious: what are the decisions behind the colors you chose to represent the various facets / forces? What do these colors as wells as the directionality (of squiggles) and textures you’ve chosen to represent forces like smell and traffic communicate (to you and to your audience)?
Hi Leah! I appreciate your feedback and it’s a very good point! It is definitely good to think in-depth. I added some design decision based on your suggestions! Thank you.
Eon, this is such a beautiful map!!! And I love how you’ve laid out your individual maps with the explanations at right. I love how you showed your progression of changes and made simplifications and other improvements to enhance your final map. Awesome work!
-Aaron
Hi Aaron!! Thank you so much!
Great Work Eon! The revised map is much more clear. By the way, I love the way you did your initial forces observation!
Hi Todd!! Thank you! 🙂
This map is awesome! I like the colors you used for this map which makes it stand out. Just make sure none of the colors are same for any of the forces people may get confused. I think you have great choices for your forces and show each forces good. Overall it’s a excellent map.
Hi Jonte! It definitely could be confusing. I changed the color of traffic to red! Thank you for your valuable feedback.
Your maps are amazing! The only suggestion I have is to perhaps to tweak either the color of the Retail & Restaurants force or the traffic range force. The yellows end up blending together. Otherwise your maps are extremely visually pleasing and the forces overlay very nicely together. Incredible job!
Nadia! Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, it definitely not a good idea to use two similar colors. Now I can see how it could be confusing for the viewer! I made a change based on your feedback! Thank you!
Also, it would be helpful to see a scale and a compass or just an arrow pointing north.
Great work, Eon! Really liked how you added your legend beside your map. The use of round corners is pleasant, might be a more complete look if you could add the round corners to all 4 edges. I find your forces being tangible and intangible very creative for a mapping project and especially loved the way you documented your observations. It would be helpful to have your map zoomed in a bit and to crop out the external map area, as our focus is on the map. It gets a bit hard to read since the map is smaller in comparison to the external map (the grayed out area). Overall, very inspiring work!
Hey, Isha! Thank you for your valuable feedback! I made the second version of the map which zoomed in, so the view can focus on map more! thank you for suggesting this. And I also added a compass, very good idea! thanks a lot!
Blown. Away. This is amazeballs.
Your sketch is incredible but hard to pinpoint where it is you saw what as it is a sketch of course and not an actual photo/video. I love it nonetheless. VERY CREATIVE!
Use of the squiggly lines on the map maybe wasn’t the best choice. I think if you have them filled in as thicker blocks as you do in your legend, it’d be a lot clearer as that was what I was searching for in your map. I do get the sentiment that you are trying to communicate with them represented as wavy blocks! Very clever! Just would be much better if they weren’t represented as thin, squiggly lines. I also love your choice of this as a force. Very, VERY unique! I, myself, am also very sensitive to smells especially in new places! It ties a lot of memories with a location. So so great and just EXCELLENT! I would say though, that your range of scent from unpleasant, pleasant, to food smells doesn’t really resonate with me. Some food smells can be pleasant, some can be unpleasant. I would definitely say you need to adjust the measurement/scaling for that force.
I also think the patterns you used for your retail and dining force and office and school force are unnecessary. Makes your map look cluttered, less cohesive with the other forces, and less clean.
I really love what you did with showing the concentration patterns of the traffic. It is very clear to see which parts of the map that traffic tends to clog up!
Wow, Krystle! These are really good points. Especially, I haven’t thought that food scents could be the unpleasant smell. That totally makes sense. ” I do get the sentiment that you are trying to communicate with them represented as wavy blocks!”–< SO smart that you pointed this out. I made some changes based on your feedback! Thanks a lot!
Wow, super digging your maps and how everything layers together quite nicely in a way that is not overwhelming. I like how you showed a much broader space of your 5 different forces maps to give context with the surrounding. Your overlay on top of the darkened satellite image with the bright colors really pop and draws my eye to each force. The green lines remind me of the old computer terminals, which I think add a cool matrixy tech vibe to them.
The one part that kind of loses some info is the retail/restaurant area since the yellow of the traffic force gets lost in a sea of yellow from the retail/restaurant force. And some of the squiggles are hard to see what color they are in this info rich area. I hate to say change the colors, since I think the colors you chose work really well together, but in overlay mode some info does get lost since colors in that area are similar.
Your final map with the key and your name is awesome! I think if I didn’t see this, I would have forgotten to put my name on it and that is super important, so thank you!
Thank you for your feedback, Megan! That’s a good point about yellow colors and squiggles area. Since several forces are overlapped in the same area, it’s hard to recognize the boundaries between two different forces. I admit that paid too much attention to overall color combination and missed the individual color relationships. Good catch!
I love how you separated your forces into tangible and intangible and that one of the intangibles is scent. But I think the strongest part of this is the way you called out the locations of the pictures you took on your map – I had plans to do something like this and I got too frustrated trying to remember and figure out exactly where I took each picture, specifically. Doing this, in this way, really gives me a sense of your experience in the order and manner in which you did – or at least I can easily imagine the sequence of your views.
My only suggestions would be to consider using a different color for the labeling text – that high-contrast cyan is very difficult to read, to the point where my eyes stopped trying to really read it, and I skimmed the last few labels toward the bottom. The only other very minor idea would be to try rounding the corners of your photos a bit, or even put them in circular shapes instead of squares – I think it will make the whole thing slightly easier on the eyes. Though I could be wrong…something to try, though, perhaps.
Thank you for the suggestion, Stacey. I agree with your suggestions regarding the text colors and rounded corner for the pictures. Yes, you are right. I tend to use cyan color a lot unconsciously because it’s one of my favorite. You just reminded me how I was not aware of user’s perspective! Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.