So you want to write a story about gerrymandering of political boundaries. And how are you going to get your readers to read such a geographically and politically interesting, but likely rather dry, topic? By playing a round of mini-golf. And that’s the brainchild of Dylan Moriarty and Joe Fox of the Washington Post graphics team.
They created this spectacularly well conceived 9 hole interactive game which lures people in, and teaches them something at the same time. All those ludicrous shapes that make a game of golf hard well, they are real. And that make politics hard too.
It’s a pretty simple idea of hitting the ball around infuriating shapes to putt in the hole in as few strokes as possible. It’s a tough game. The cartographic work is sumptuous. The hand-drawn holes with painfully positioned brick edges (1 brick = 1 mile so they’re in proportion). The backdrops are shaded. The labelling is subtle. The music and sound effects belie the difficulty but add to the enjoyment.
It’s just a wonderfully imagined piece of work, expertly executed, and likely to feature in my maps of the year as a firm favourite, let alone a map of the week.