¬¬¬¬¬ I . R . L .
• part 1 •
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥
Starting with the typographic freeways connecting islands. Here's the most simple way of doing that, pretty self explanatory.
¥
I'm not sure how well it works when you start to complicate the letters in terms of legitability. But I think there is alot of scope here to come up with some really interesting patterns...
¥
I came across this image which I think is from a Grand Theft Auto game (1). What could happen that on each of the islands there would be one main road or freeway then off of that shoot loads of smaller roads so you clearly get the I R L on each island, see sketch below. If there was some way of rendering this so it didn't look like a map of a real place, but more somewhere virtual or man-made could work really well. You mentioned having some sort of chat window on the top, I'm not sure what this (1) is but it could easily be manipulated into being some sort of virtual enviroment where people chat to each other. Chat window on the right, the orange pointers were people etc.
¥
One final thought are these two images I've come across (1 / 2). Maybe the geometric shapes in the tracks of 1 could lead to something?
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥
And some space stations, they all seem to be either circular or square...
• Circle (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9)
• Square (1 / 2 / 3 / 4)
• not sure what this is but it's cool (1)
• Flickr has LOADS of ones made out of lego, these two > (1 / 2)
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥
•