Showerspass Cycling Jacket with London Map

showerspass_beforeafter

London’s street network appears on a new cycling jacket – when you shine a light at it!

Showerspass, a Portland (Oregon)-based company, has unveiled two new versions of their Elite cycling jacket – “Hi-Vis” and “Torch” versions. Both of them contain MapReflect, which is a rather brilliant idea for using a map design as a reflective panel. The map is a stiched together pattern featuring the street networks for various different cities, including part of London – specifically Whitechapel, Wapping and Rotherhithe in East London, as well as part of the River Thames’s most famous wiggle. You can see the section in a couple of places – as well as on the main part of the jacket, it appears on a sleeve:

showerspass_londonmap

The Hi-Vis jackets are predominately neon green and have the map section in their side panels and underside of the sleeve in two versions – Silver Reflective, where the road/pathlines are black and the spaces between the roads is reflective, and Black Reflective, where the road network itself is reflective, on a black background.

The Torch jackets have the colours reversed, so the main body of the jacket is reflective, with the street/path network overlaid in Black. These are pretty intense when you shine a light straight on!

There is additionally a lighter jacket in black (with the streets/paths in reflective silver) coming out soon.

Showerspass approached me a while ago about obtaining the map graphic, which I put together for them. It’s OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) for a number of city centres, woven together. The cities chosen include London and Portland, as well as other cities known for a strong urban cycling culture and a regular high density of streets in their centres.

showerspass_back