Why the best maps leave things out
A map that showed everything would be the size of the territory and just as hard to navigate. Usefulness is a matter of omission.
The famous transit map of a large city is wrong about almost everything. The distances are false, the angles are false, the river is a cartoon. It is also the most useful map the city has ever produced, because it is wrong in exactly the ways that do not matter to someone trying to get from one station to another, and right in the only way that does.
Every good map is a set of decisions about what to leave out. The hiking map leaves out the shops. The road map leaves out the footpaths. The map on the back of the museum leaflet leaves out the entire city except the three streets you need. None of them are lying. They are each answering one question and refusing the rest.
The digital map tried to end this by showing everything at once, with layers you could switch on and off. It is a remarkable achievement and a slightly worse map, because the work of deciding what matters has been handed back to the reader, who is standing in the rain with a phone.
Designers of other things could learn from the transit map. A dashboard that shows every number is a spreadsheet. A menu with every dish is a warehouse. A news page with every story is a feed, and we know how those feel. The craft is in the leaving out, and the leaving out is the hard part.
Today's picks follow that thread: how tall a mountain really is, the quiet usefulness of the spreadsheet, birds that commute, and the case for the off switch. Short, chosen, and missing a great deal on purpose.