If you are an economic developer, digital maps are great. They are flexible, they don’t blow away while you are standing on a site, you can turn layers off and on, you don’t have to worry about a stack of them that are outdated. In a perfect world, it would be really efficient if they also took the place of old fashioned paper maps. But they don’t – hear me out.
I know you reproduce digitally created maps in your collateral. In fact was recently at a networking event, and a laminated state map at every seat made conversation a lot easier than it would have been if we were scrolling back and forth between different digital views, or zooming in and out, or knocking heads as we leaned it to share the view.
But beyond that, I’m talking about the real old fashioned ones that you can’t quite get to ever fold up again. Not the ones that have advertising all over the important parts. Just a plain old road map. One side that gives regional context and allows a better sense of what is right outside your boundaries. And the other side a zoomed-in view that shows how different parts of the community relate to one another. Aside from the fact that no zooming is required, it’s a much more effective way to experience a shared reality with a group and to see both more detail and greater scale than a screen allows.
It doesn’t have to be branded. It doesn’t have to be fancy. But it does need to be in your car, or your briefcase, or your conference room, or your desk drawer, because you never know when it will be just the thing to get everyone literally on the same page.