This apparently simple site shows the location of every significant venue at the University of Virginia. And it makes the process of doing it look easy. It’s a study in how to present a complex block of information on the web in a way that maximizes speed and ease of use by delivering exactly the information the user needs and no more.

This structured series of maps is based on an enormous detailed aerial map of the university created years ago by John Ruseau. One approach here would have been to present the whole map in one large graphic. At 72 dpi this file would either be so large you would have to scroll around, or smaller and correspondingly lacking in detail. Neither of these is a good choice. And the truth is that when you approach a map you are usually only interested in one small area anyway.

Our solution was to section the big map, creating a series of smaller maps each of which is an easy download and remains detailed enough to be useful. We then created a stylized, all-university, master map showing how all the smaller maps fit together. The result is the best possible user experience—perfect balance between size, download time, and resolution. This site is so well optimized and compressed that the whole thing fit on one floppy disk with room left over.