California in text

Here's an interesting map that illustrates a bit of gestalt psychology in its portrayal of California:



The image is created of text, with the name of the each county repeated within its boundaries to create the image. Each letter is colored to represent the land type at its location, and the letters are spaced closely together to represent high elevation and more widely to represent lower elevations. The brain easily picks out these patterns and has no trouble spotting the wide spacing as the low central valley area, the brown deserts, and the wavy "Ocean."

Here's a link to a larger image (warning: large PDF). You can see some other interesting maps at the Bizarre Map Challenge Awards List.