Cartifact Blog

Los Angeles, California – Cartifact announced today that Kyle King has joined the company’s executive team as President.

“Kyle is joining us at an exciting time for Cartifact and our charted growth”, says Graham Marriott, CEO and Founder of Cartifact. “His strategic planning and operational experience combined with a strong business and financial background is exactly what we need as Cartifact continues its expansion into new markets”.

Prior to joining Cartifact, King held numerous executive positions at Realogy Corporation, a global provider of real estate and relocation services. Most recently, he was directly responsible for the growth of Coldwell Banker and Coldwell Banker Commercial both in California and the U.S. as a whole. During the six years that King was at Realogy, top line revenue for the commercial operations grew by $300,000,000 and he was personally responsible for recruiting one third of the company’s largest affiliates. Through his extensive experience in assessing growth opportunities, he is adept at sophisticated merger transactions and ushering companies into adjacent markets. King has been a speaker at countless industry functions.

Over the past 30 years, King has served in an executive leadership position at UMFC Inc, Stadium Imports, The Midland Group, Sverdrup Corporation and The King Interests. He has a broad history of recognizing opportunities and managing change in multiple business segments, designing market approaches and leading implementation to produce superior results for clients.

About Cartifact: Cartifact specializes in the design and production of high-end maps and map systems for print, desktop and mobile media. Major worldwide companies look to Cartifact to set the industry standard for excellence in cartographic design, mapmaking technology and the communication of location-based information.

Cartifact has designed global map systems for MapQuest, Yahoo! and deCarta, in addition to providing premium map and data integration services for major Real Estate and Financial Services companies including CB Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Bank of America.

Contact
Graham Marriott, CEO
213-327-0200
gmarriott@cartifact.com

Over the last couple of years Cartifact has gone through a significant shift in applying our cartographic skills.  While computer design software has been the core tool since Cartifact’s inception, the end result of our work has made a full transformation from a focus on printed maps to design for online and mobile display of maps.

While many of Cartifact’s maps still are distributed as paper products, more and more of our work is seen by millions who view maps online or in the mobile space.  This transition started a few years ago when we redesigned the look and feel of Yahoo!’s online mapping and continued with recent new designs for MapQuest and deCarta, a leading mobile map provider.

While core cartographic principles hold true, applying our skills in a new medium required a comprehensive reconsideration of every map element.   Three prime areas of new design decisions are:

Color

The RGB color space of display is very different than the CMYK ink colors of a printing press.  RGB provides an entire range of bright and subtle colors that were not available to us in the print world, allowing us to highlight information and create separate layers of information more effectively using color.

Type

Unlike color, the choice of readable typefaces and styles are comparatively restricted on displays due to screen resolution and readability at small sizes.  One typographic advantage we have though with displays, is the dynamic capabilities of motion and animation along with the ability to change size as the map scale changes.  As screen technology advances and resolution increases, like with Apple’s Retina Displays, the ability for designers to feature nuanced type and font varieties will again increase.

Scale

Online map systems feature multiple scaled maps allowing the user not just to zoom in and out, but to view different amounts of information at each zoom view.  Designing in a multi-scale environment, allows us to tailor what information is shown at what scale in order to give the viewer just the right information without overloading or crowding the map.  This scale-dependent cartographic design is one of the most exciting and challenging changes.  Our experience in single scale paper maps provides the understanding required to design effectively in many scales at once.

For our clients, the journey we’ve taken provides a huge opportunity to display geographically referenced data in new map contexts.  Our work is not just about designing a map background, but integrating complex databases and displaying them within the map itself.  We’re constantly creating new tools and applications that explore the relationship of data and map.

One more thing.   As we made the transition from paper to pixels, we took care to make sure that our mission statement accurately reflects the work we do.  Here it is: Cartifact creates innovative map products that synthesize and communicate complex information with clarity and elegance.

We are pleased to announce that MapQuest recently launched a new set of map styles designed by our cartographers and artists at Cartifact.

Our work combines rich cartography with the artistic blending of vegetation, shaded relief and other earth surface treatments.  These styles have been rolled out in MapQuest’s North American maps, while treatments to other parts of the world will continue to be added in the coming months.

More information about this project can be viewed here.

Cartifact’s poster map of the greater Downtown Los Angeles area has been recognized with a 2009 American Graphic Design Award by Graphic Design USA.

The map, which extends from Dodger Stadium in the north to the 10 Freeway in the south, shows building-level detail of the fabric that makes up Downtown Los Angeles.

Cartifact’s proprietary Map Portal system hosts an interactive version of the map which can be seen at www.maps.cartifact.com.  Also, printed versions can be purchased through maps.com.