Thanks @connor!
The idea originally came to me while standing in the restroom at Zachary's pizza in Berkeley (delicious, highly recommended). They had a map of Berkeley on the wall, and for whatever reason inspiration struck and I felt a compulsion make pretty maps.
@dayvli and I teamed up to knock the project out after walking away from our previous startup. I give him full credit for not just making one beautiful style (my original idea), but painstakingly crafting a dozen unique, modern aesthetics. He helped take the idea from a small fun experiment to a small-scale but really, really interesting art statement. I think his exuberance was the real spark that inspired us to try to build a brand around minimalist maps.
We actually render our maps from XML using Mapnik, so we don't actually have the tiles pre-rendered. Could be interesting to play with though. Might be something worth chatting about in a week or so (we have a *lot* queued up for now)
Placement