Labels VS Roads

The following two projects display an interesting alternative to common map design. The one on the left is a map of London, showing only the labels of streets, parks and neighborhoods. The second image, on the right, is a map of the US displaying 26 million individual road segments. What’s particularly interesting on both cases is that even though they highlight a unique graphic element (labels or roads), certain geographic features - such as river Thames and several parks on the first one, or sparsely populated areas, mountains and rivers on the second - are immediately perceived.

A detailed view on both maps shows how intricate they are. If the portrayed subject was the same, these two representations could simply highlight different layers of the same map. I enjoy the simplicity of the execution and how it still maintains its integrity even by showing a single layer of a usually dense matrix of information.