Clever-folding tyvek San Francisco map, with out-of-the-way landmarks

Shan sez, "Our guide/map of SF is printed on a single sheet of A3 Tyvek, and is then folded up according to a technique originally developed at Tokyo University for satellite solar panels. The bistable nature of the fold means that it can be fully opened or closed in one smooth motion, and that there is no way to fold it 'wrong.' The places we included are a mix of overlooked gems, classic restaurants, and other things like hidden parks, games played across the city, and interesting shops and markets. We just launched our project on Kickstarter yesterday evening, and as of today we're almost 10% funded!"

TOC Guide to SF (Thanks, Shan!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: cartography • crowdfunding • happy mutants • kickstarter • maker • origami • san francisco • travel

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jetfx

I have to find out how they fold that map, as I fold maps everyday at work as a cartographer.
- http://twitter.com/wheatpond Eric Meltzer
  
  Hi Jetfx, The fold we used is most commonly known as the “Miura Fold,” after its popularizer, Koryo Miura. There are many resources online that can teach you how to fold it, and we intend to publish a guide of our own as well. If you’re interested in reading the original paper of Miura, it’s called “Map Fold A La Miura Style, Its Physical Characteristics and Application to the Space Science” If you get in touch with me on twitter twitter.com/wheatpond I can send you a PDF.
  - jetfx
    
    Thanks very much, I’ll contact you tomorrow!
  - Morkl
    
    Instant gratification, now on an Internet near you!
    http://www.scipress.org/e-library/rpf/pdf/chap2/0077.PDF
sean

I tried watching the video, but the herky-jerky montage of split-second shots was too much for my brain at 6:30 AM. Call me when you have a nice, smooth video with shots that last at least a second each. Maybe with a swan gliding across a placid pond with a bit of Debussey low in the background… I DID see the folding part and that was cool as heck!
- princessalex
  
  For me, the big disconnect was between the image on the video and what the guy was saying. He would be talking about bars, but the image would be cheese or produce. When he was talking about restaurants, there were people in an art supply store. My brain just couldn’t concentrate with the two different things to focus attention on.
  - retepslluerb
    
    Yes, badly cut, I agree.
    
    Nifty idea, though. Even though I use apps a lot, I can see myself using this map.
    - http://twitter.com/wheatpond Eric Meltzer
      
      We thought hard about making an app, but once we found the miura fold, it became obvious that a physical map was better than the best experience the current generation of phone apps can deliver.
      - retepslluerb
        
        Looks to me that you are trying to focus on a small selection. In which case using a map is quite probably the better tool, at least for the current generations.
        
        And I’m totally okay with such a limited palette of choices if I have reason to believe that it has been selected with care.
        
        As a temporary visitor to San Francisco – or any other large city, for that matter – I’ll be never able to see all there is to see and fretting over might-have-seens just causes anxiety.
        
        And as a newcomer who’s to, I’ll learn from the locals, anyway.
    - sean
      
      “Dammit, Jim, I’m a mapmaker, not a videographer!”
gobo

Now I miss living in San Francisco :(
MelSkunk

I would really like to see this for other cities in the future as well. Careful, you might get some commissions in the future :)
http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

Now I really want to know what these ‘hidden gems’ are that will be on the map. There’s so many of them in SF it must have been hard to pick.
adamnvillani

I dig that they’ve got a nifty folding scheme, but why don’t we get any glimpses of what the cartography looks like? All we get are promises that he’ll point us to cooler things than other maps do, which I guess is OK if your tastes happen to align with this guy’s. This could be a great map for all I know, but based on this video I’m skeptical.
- http://twitter.com/wheatpond Eric Meltzer
  
  Valid concerns. there’s of course no accounting for taste, BUT the places we chose are not exactly marginal–who doesn’t like freshly baked bread? or attentive and careful service?
  
  Of course you might not like burritos, for example, and you can just not go to the burrito places we highlight. but we think the criteria we used to choose places transcend taste!