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Basics: treat the design of the icons - the case of the map of the discovery of Yara

Some of the major Italian newspapers in their online version often use Google Maps to provide maps in support of their products. Republic makes extensive use using Google My Maps, a quick tool to create simple maps and share them online quickly, storing them in an online gallery. There's eye fell on a map that shows the areas related to the story of the young Yara, whose body was found yesterday in the home page that announced the finding was clearly illustrated the link to the map displayed by clicking here.


As I said this is a map created with Google My Maps or embedded in the page web. Visualizzandola a pieno schermo si nota come abbia ricevuto più di 14.000 visualizzazioni dal 5 dicembre, giorno in cui è stata creata per poi venire aggiornata seguendo gli sviluppi dell'indagine.

Non ci convince però del tutto la simbologia adoperata: l'icona utilizzata per segnalare il luogo del ritrovamento del cadavere, cioè il busto stilizzato di un uomo in divisa, non ci pare la più adatta allo scopo. Inoltre essendo l'icona di colore chiaro ed essendo il luogo del ritrovamento del cadavere spostato nella parte bassa dello schermo, rispetto al gruppo delle altre icone, essa non attira immediatamente lo sguardo, specie se si utilizza la modalità “Mappa”. Anche le icone used to indicate places where searches have been carried out are unclear in their symbolism and the color is not visible. Even the color of the house is barely visible if you use the mode "Map". We have therefore tried to change some icons, always using the default ones proposed by Google Maps with some repainting a graphics program (GIMP). You can see the result here .


The place where the body was found more quickly leaps to the eye and the whole map is more readable, both using "Map" and "Satellite." Results could be even more effective get completely redesigning the icons. So use Google My Maps can be an effective way to quickly and effectively to a head online to enhance their articles with maps but it is always important to think carefully about the symbolism. Similarly, the Corriere della Sera
has also produced his map always relying on Google Maps (but not through Google My Maps), which seems, however, clearly lower than that of the Republic.