Readable and informative London shopping street maps (Anders Jacobsen's blog)

November 04, 2005

Readable and informative London shopping street maps

What do you get if you combine the business information in Yellow Pages / Google Local, the geographical information of Streetmaps / Multimap et al and Harry Beck's information design principles of the London Tube Map?

Why - Street Sensation of course.

I only discovered Street Sensation a few days ago while searching for a listing of gadget shops in Tottenham Court Road. What these people have done is essentially making a very visual guide for people visiting London for shopping.

For example, there are panoramic photos guiding you if you've just tumbled out of a tube station trying to find out where on earth you are (see e.g. Piccadilly, Oxford Circus etc). Very cool idea.

Furthermore there is an updated index of shops and a guide to what they sell; street by street. The maps here and here, for example, are a decent way to 'walk London' online but don't do justice to the really well-made, well-designed maps in the printed edition! They look like tube maps, but instead of lines there are roads; instead of stations there are colour-coded shops. Genius. Really really cool:

street sensation sample pages (source: www.streetsensation.co.uk)

The printed guide which is quite inexpensive, but in all fairness is a just twentysomething double-page printed pages from an inkjet printer - a PDF file delivery would have worked just as well for the price (and would have been re-printable after bringing out the sheets a few times). Still - an invaluable little gem to bring if you're coming to London for your Christmas shopping.