Browsing the Map of Space Ship Earth

Why use Google Maps when you can get GPS directions on The Death Star Instead? Mapbox Studio is a toolkit that allows apps and websites to serve up their own custom-designed maps to users. Companies like Square, Pinterest, Foursquare, and Evernote con provide custom-skinned Mapboxes instead, changing map elements to better fit in with their brand.

But Mapbox can do far cooler stuff. It can blast you to Space Station Earth, a Mapbox that makes the entire planet look like the blinking, slate gray skin of the Star Wars Death Star.

The skin was created by 22-year fashion designer Eleanor Lutz from Seattle who is a self-described fan of science fiction and computer games. Though the finished skin looks a lot like Star Wars, the aesthetic of Spaceship Earth wasn't actually informed by the classical science fantasy movie. "I crammed it full of bright lights and chrome like some of my favorite post-apocalyptic worlds: the Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, and Starcraft" Lutz writes.

The wonderful imaginative feature of Spaceship Earth is that it taps into another reason people look at maps besides finding their way to a destination: to transport them to another place, or in this case, another world.

You can fully explore Spaceship Earth here.

Via Fastcompany, via Citylab. Thanks Rachel.