Last winter, when Matt Forrester worked in downtown Minneapolis, he often took the skyways to get around, but, at first it was challenging to find his way.
Forrester, who then worked at
Thrivent Financial, frequently used the indoor walkways to get to the
Minneapolis Convention Center. It took about five tries to master his route.
“It’s a terribly confusing system if you’re not there day-to-day, or if you’re not in your own office," he says.
That's where his cartography skills came in handy. Around the same time, he and his business partner, Kate Chanba, started a map-making company,
Carticulate.
The existing skyway map, which the city has been using for a long time, is “really bad. There are a few things wrong,” for starters, and it’s difficult for those who are color-blind to read.
Forrester and Chanba put together an alternative skyway
map to address those issues. When they published it online, it led to a huge spike on their website, he says.
Subway maps like
Harry Beck’s 1933 London Underground inspired them.
Their map shows multiple ways to get from point A to point B. Each building acts as a subway “stop” with seven different “lines,” which are color-coded.
They eliminated the background geography, such as cross streets, which helped simplify things. “Most people aren’t leaving the skyways,” he says.
Their goal is to get the map into the skyways, with some corresponding signage. “It definitely trumps any other map that’s out there,” he says, since other maps don’t clearly show connecting routes that go through multiple buildings.
The challenge is that there’s no one entity governing the skyways.
Even though the pair moved their company to New York this month, they're staying the course. “We’d love to help out the area and benefit the city. We want to do what we can to make it better.”
Source: Matt Forrester, Carticulate
Writer: Anna Pratt