London 2012 Maps…

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alissa-walker/designerati/stamen-designs-custom-map-london-olympics

One challenge faced by any city ramping up its local services in advance of hosting the Olympics: You can’t put any old company’s logo out there for the world to see unless they’ve inked a hefty sponsorship deal and/or been named as an official contractor. That means even the lettering on the side of the construction vehicles building your new stadium will get painted out in press photos. Online, where almost everything is branded, from YouTube to Flickr, this gets tricky, especially when it comes to mapping–yep, you guessed it–no using Google Maps. So LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) tapped SF-based collective Stamen Design to build a custom map for the London 2012 website, a beautiful and radical departure from off-the-shelf mapping programs that makes full use of that pupil-rattling logo.

I never even thought this would be an issue. I just naturally use google maps nowadays.

One thing that did annoy me slightly though was that the maps and site were not made or designed here in th UK. It was in fact made by up and coming stamen design who are based in San Francisco, USA. I cant help but think that all that surely a London Ad agemncy would have been perfect for this? But hey, what do I know?