{"id":14903,"date":"2023-06-01T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=14903"},"modified":"2023-06-01T01:14:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T06:14:13","slug":"2023-state-map-doesnt-have-the-blues-it-has-the-teals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2023\/06\/2023-state-map-doesnt-have-the-blues-it-has-the-teals\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 state map doesn’t have the blues, it has the teals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memorial Day weekend in odd years means the release of the new Iowa highway map. The 2023 map (extremely large PDF) was available online<\/a> a week ago. But when I loaded it, things felt off. The shade of blue was noticeably different, and noticeably duller. The overall border of the state map is a better blue than what’s shown below right, which is very odd. The inset maps on the back<\/a> still have the correct\/previous coloring.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The above comparison is done in RGB (red-green-blue) screen values rather than the CMYK printing process (cyan-magenta-yellow-black). Here’s an explanation of the color wheel<\/a> and the difference between additive and subtractive colors.<\/p>\n

The 2023 map’s blue color has a lot more red value in it and less<\/em> blue, tilting it toward more of a teal than the brilliant sky blue it had been. The red for the highways got a bit more green and blue, giving it a very slight pink tinge. The yellow is duller with its larger dose of blue, looking more like a highlighter mark after it’s been there for a while. The green for interstate highways, not seen in the clip, seems duller as well.<\/p>\n

Typography-wise, lettering for all the special features appears to have been thinned out. The county names definitely got thinner and shifted from a dusky pink to lavender.<\/p>\n

The 2023 map has been updated to reflect populations from the 2020 census<\/a>. Burlington, Clinton, and Fort Dodge all fell under the 25,000 threshold, so they get less prominent type. Waukee just missed that level, but hit it by July 2021 according to census estimates<\/a>, surpassing those county seats and also Ottumwa. Harlan, Shenandoah, and Vinton fell below 5,000, so their names are also diminished. (But Vinton now looks to be in the under-1000 point size, smaller than Urbana, which shouldn’t be the case.)<\/p>\n

Highway-wise, the most notable changes on the map are the extension of four-lane US 61 north of Burlington to near Mediapolis, which will be done very soon, and extension of four-lane US 30 to east of IA 21, but without an interchange square because that’s not finished either. The Council Bluffs inset still shows NE 85, which is no longer a highway in the Omaha area.<\/p>\n

A printed map will look different from what’s on a screen, but these colors are decidedly VERY off. Is it due to the blue border? Perhaps the map was processed with a different color profile\/color management setting?<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> OK, now things are getting weird. All of the above criticism applies when you view the state map PDF as a whole<\/em>. But, if you go to the individual sections that are available on the map page, the colors there<\/em> look like they have looked before. Here’s the southeast corner. <\/a>I’m baffled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memorial Day weekend in odd years means the release of the new Iowa highway map. The 2023 map (extremely large PDF) was available online a week ago. But when I loaded it, things felt off. The shade of blue was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14903"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14942,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14903\/revisions\/14942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}