Seattle's Weirdest Intersections Make a Fetching Design

The poster "[depicts] 20 of the city’s complicated street crossings with minimalistic graphics. They range from Queen Anne’s seven-way stop to the busy meeting of Denny Way, Stewart Street and Yale Avenue near South Lake Union." Every street grid goes a little off-kilter, and Seattle is no exception.

Since Gorman posted them on his Etsy shop, Barely Maps, the posters have picked up a level of Internet fame not common among applications of transportation wonkery. Lee shares some of Gorman's insight about how the idea about the poster came to him, how the poster has sold lately, and the some statistics and reporting on the state of the city's streets.

The description of the map on the Barely Maps Etsy shop puts the joke behind the map pretty well: "When I first moved to Seattle, a friend told me that Seattle's layout is easy to understand. 'It's all a grid,' she said, 'until it's not.'"