Google Maps New Look

[HighwayMaster]

Google Maps has a new look! Check it out!

[corco]

The new fonts/spacing are questionable, and the new US route shields have a weird shape. That said, I've been doing Google Maps intensive work all day the last couple days, and the new shields do seem less stressful on the eyes after extended work- since it's not Google's job to shape shields correctly, I guess I like it because of the reduced eye strain.

[Alex]

I see new style highway markers and exit number icons. It appears the external line strokes on the roads were thinned too. Anything else besides this and what corco posted changed?

[UptownRoadGeek]

It looks more cartoonish to me.

[rickmastfan67]

I'm not liking the new shields.  Look worse than what they had before imo.

Especially the exit numbers.  Man, those are harder to read now for sure.

[HighwayMaster]

Personally, I like the Interstate ones and the State Route ones, but not the U.S. ones.

[english si]

The UK changes of the actual data have been discussed on SABRE. There's some iffy stuff there.

It's a bit of both - obvious colouring problems (almost every motorway spur and slip road being non-motorway, the former M10 and the roundabout at the end still being blue) haven't been sorted while some less obvious ones (Isle of Man and Jersey in particular) have been - though I have to give them finally turning the A38(M) blue (it was reddy-orange before), but they lose it by making the Newry bypass in Northern Ireland blue. The data updates are hit and miss (including changing back a recent update that was correct), there's some really odd stuff in places where the changes have taken place - turning a trunk road into a track in a place where they will bypass a poor stretch, but prematurely. It looks like a gap in the road and directions don't work, meaning Inverness - Wick is 103.6 mi, 2 hr 1 min on Bing, and 135 mi, 3 hours 40 mins on Google. The longest possible detour, from one side of the 'gap' to the other is about 90 miles and 2h45.

[cu2010]

The new design of the Trans-Canada Highway shield is just so wrong...it's even worse than the botched job on the US ones...

[Lightning Strike]

The new design of the Trans-Canada Highway shield is just so wrong...it's even worse than the botched job on the US ones...

Wow, I actually liked them when they resembled a maple leaf, now, I don't really know what that looks like, almost like a leaf on fire or something.
As for the Interstate shields, I don't know how I feel about the color scheme, they do kinda have a cartoonish feel to them.

[Duke87]

If nothing else it's a testament to why graphic designers who don't have a particular interest in road signs shouldn't be allowed to design stuff like this. Forget just the US shields, every shield is stylized at best. Seriously guys, there are standard specs for these things which are publicly available for free, you don't need to redesign your own version of them!

It would be awesome if they actually used the standard design for state and provincial routes rather than ovals and home plates, but I've yet to see anyone but a state DOT or a roadgeek produce such.

[NE2]

It would be awesome if they actually used the standard design for state and provincial routes rather than ovals and home plates, but I've yet to see anyone but a state DOT or a roadgeek produce such.

I've seen the occasional commercial paper map with the actual shield shapes (e.g. ACSC if I remember correctly).

In OpenStreetMap, some people are working on getting shields displayed instead of the current British-style markers. This would include state shields. Personally I think this is unnecessary and could hurt legibility in some cases (e.g. WV fractional routes, strangely-shaped county route shields).

[Alps]

I like the use of a few shapes (circle, square, pentagon), but I don't think they're applied in the right places. But I definitely like the colored shields in New Brunswick. I also like the simpler colors that hark back to much earlier versions - or to the version you get when you have a bad connection. I'm hoping that the API has lost a few pounds in the process, though I have my doubts. Dislike that county routes still get no respect.

ETA: Interestingly, Aussies seem to love the changes, it's cleared up a lot of their route numbering apparently. That's what they get for having so many overlapping numbering systems...

[Eth]

In OpenStreetMap, some people are working on getting shields displayed instead of the current British-style markers. This would include state shields. Personally I think this is unnecessary and could hurt legibility in some cases (e.g. WV fractional routes, strangely-shaped county route shields).

Well, it's better than just not displaying any marker at all (see: almost every multiplex in the USA involving anything higher than a state route).

[stormwatch7721]

I think the exit numbers just need a slight improvement by making it a little bigger. I like the new font and the shields though.

[Central Avenue]

I don't mind the new shield shapes, but the numbers in them look all grainy and pixellated on my computer. :\

[huskeroadgeek]

I noticed this yesterday-I was using it in the afternoon and came back a few hours later and when I moved the map, I suddenly noticed shield fonts changing. I did notice the odd shape of the U.S. shields but other than that I haven't noticed many notable differences.

[triplemultiplex]

The rounded bottoms on US and interstate shields makes them look fat.  Maybe Google is trying to tell America to get some exercise. The two digit interstates look okay, I guess, but 3 digit shields are obnoxiously semi-circular. They look like lazy versions of what they're supposed to be.

I've got no quarrel with the flatted ovals for state highways, though.  That looks good.  At least in my area, they seem to be doing a better job of marking all the routes on multiplexes.

Huh, look at that, Google is labeling I-269 in Tennessee.  Guess they can't wait either.

[roadfro]

Agreed on the exit number styling (it's really hard to read) and the rounded bottom of the US route shield. I like the new ovals for state routes.

They seem to have messed up some of the road types in the conversion, as I'm seeing the entire Las Vegas Beltway marked as freeway when there's still several stretches in the north that still have traffic signals...


Also, would it kill Google to add banners to the special route markers on its maps?!?!? MapQuest figured this out practically from day one, it shouldn't be that hard...

[deathtopumpkins]

Well they fixed the fact that my street is (and has been for at least 50 years) one way finally, and a few other random local errors, but even though a few were fixed, a lot of roads still have the wrong line type. One example that quickly comes to mind is California SR 86 and 86S, which are shown as freeways even though they are plain old divided highways for all but a mile or so, and La Cienga Blvd's short expressway stretch in Los Angeles is shown as a freeway now, even through the intersection in the middle. CA SR's 58 and 14 have the same issue near Mojave / California City.

[rickmastfan67]

Well, I might not like the new look, but they have at least made I-381 a freeway FINALLY!!!

http://g.co/maps/hchru

[treichard]

If nothing else it's a testament to why graphic designers who don't have a particular interest in road signs shouldn't be allowed to design stuff like this. Forget just the US shields, every shield is stylized at best. Seriously guys, there are standard specs for these things which are publicly available for free, you don't need to redesign your own version of them!

It would be awesome if they actually used the standard design for state and provincial routes rather than ovals and home plates, but I've yet to see anyone but a state DOT or a roadgeek produce such.

The standard designs might work in a digital "large print edition" tile map or on well designed printed maps.

In the tile maps like Google, the more complicated shield shapes, like the US highway shield, cannot be rendered so accurately when they must be represented by a graphic with only a few pixels in each dimension.  The same is true of shield designs where the most important part -- the route number -- is a rather small fraction of the area of the shield (e.g., Idaho, NC, MI).

For digital maps, you primarily need the route number to be a legible size to serve its functional purpose and for it to be inside a shield that is small to keep clutter low.  I would expect that using accurate state highway shields in states like Idaho, Florida, Michigan, or North Carolina (to name a few) would be a poor choice for standard tile maps. 

The US shields and oval US state highway "shields" are reasonable compromises, even if they are not perfect.

I'd love to see Google use a different font for the text in their maps so that the pairs "i","l" and "rn","m" are much easier to tell apart. 

[Henry]

I'm also on the fence here...not sure what to make of it  

[NJRoadfan]

Google still hasn't addressed the following in Maps.

1. No county borders shown. Mapquest and Microsoft had this from the start
2. No county/state secondary route markers shown. Google added them as text for "state secondaries", so the data is there. There was also the US-527 goof in NJ a while back.

[drrosenrosen]

Google still hasn't addressed the following in Maps.

1. No county borders shown. Mapquest and Microsoft had this from the start
2. No county/state secondary route markers shown. Google added them as text for "state secondaries", so the data is there. There was also the US-527 goof in NJ a while back.

3. Tolled limited access highways are not denoted on the map in a different color from free limited access highways.

[NE2]

3. Tolled limited access highways are not denoted on the map in a different color from free limited access highways.

Even stranger, they are in some places (e.g. France, Spain).