This morning, as I was trolling around for info on yesterday's amazing political elections, I found myself pleasantly lost in the New York Time's interactive map. There is tons and tons of info available, but it is all organized in a wonderfully simple and quite beautiful way. From the nice font to the very peaceful blues and reds, to the fantastic, and highly fluid, pop-ups, the map is both treasure-trove and wonderland. This is an excellent example of design and how Pink's 5 principle's -- story, symphony, empathy, play, & meaning -- can be used to create a fantastic fount of information. The map tells the story of yesterday's voting, integrating the both the big picture (the national level) and all the little pictures (the precinct level), using multiple modes of communication (pictures, numbers, words), all organized to provide the user with the info s/he might want in an simple, clean, easy-to-navigate package. It encourages the user to explore and helps him/her make sense out of the final tally. With a quick glance, I just noticed (11:43 am EST) that my home state -- Indiana -- was officially declared as a win for the President-elect: the color turned from light blue to dark blue. A quick look gives me the details: Obama 49.9%, McCain 49.0%.