If Edward Tufte got high, gobbled down the MLS database, and yawned it back up in Technicolor, the aftermath might look something like Cheerio Maps, Stamen Design’s new experimental visualization of San Francisco home sales:
Cheerio Maps pushes the geospatial cloud of dots concept into psychedelic territory, where tiny points and conservative tints melt to ridiculously-large circles and candy store colors. The result is at once beautiful, jarring, and utilitarian, in strange ways that I can feel but don’t yet completely understand.
Right now, Cheerio Maps features the San Francisco Bay Area real estate market alone. But whoa, dude, if that makes you feel left out, don’t freak… Stamen’s gotcha covered. Kill the pain of omission with multiple hits of the sharkify feature:
Hungry fish swimming through the Tenderloin, man… right on! With a full United States upgrade – plus a companion SpaghettiOs mode, of course – Cheerio Maps could be a contender for Best Sleeper Visualization of 2010.
Before you fire up Cheerio Maps, you might want to read Stamen’s announcement, which describes how it works in fine detail.