Remember Logorama, that Academy Award-winning animated short that imagined Los Angeles as a city of logos, brand identities and corporate spokescreatures? If you ever wished there was a way you see New York the same way but without the entertainingly foul-mouthed mascots you'll be happy to know that your dreams have become reality. Yay?
Let's all say hello to City Maps, the latest attempt to make our bustling metropolis easier to manage. Unfortunately, while it is doing that the site-and-iPhone-app also turns New York City's gorgeous grid into the kind of thing that would make even make a die-hard logo-lover give pause.
Still—beyond freaking out those who fear corporate colonization (too late!)—the site does offer some useful tricks. By combining data from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other social networking sites, City Maps lets users look around where they are for shopping and entertaining tips—deals, for instance, appear as flashing green circles over stores. Then, if possible, you can act on those tips from inside the site (i.e. "oh, John Carter is playing at 9 p.m.? Sure, I'm up for a laugh, let's buy tickets"). The site even taps into some public data a lot of people forget exists. For instance, click on a subway stop and City Maps taps the MTA's database to let you know when the next trains there are scheduled to leave.
If only using City Maps didn't make us want to never see a logo ever again for as long as we live... Maybe watching Logorama will help:
Ah, yes. Much better.
