[GIS] Emulating grayscale basemap look+feel in Google Maps

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I love the design on the Development Seed homepage, where they've used a grayscale basemap with bold 3D-style graphic markers.

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It appears that they've used the ModestMaps API to create a tiled basemap at various resolutions, with the text and graphics burned into the basemap.

I'd like to emulate this look+feel (for a personal, just-for-fun project) using freely available tools such as the Google Maps API. I need the ability to change the marker overlays rapidly, so they would need to draw dynamically over the basemap.

Is it possible to achieve a similar grayscale, terrain-based backdrop using Google Maps?

The Google Maps API Styling documentation shows how to reduce the saturation of the topo map, but I can't see an option to do it with the Terrain map.

I think I can emulate the bold graphics using the complex Icons sample as a starting point.

Best Answer

I don't know whether this will help at all, or whether Google maps supports other tile layers, but the there is an open source project (and some freely accessable tile servers) for generating base maps.

http://acetate.geoiq.com/tiles/terrain/preview.html looks pretty close to what you are after (although not quite as nice).

You could roll your own using the source as well as an additional option. Check out GitHub for all the info (including the url structure for the tile servers and the pre-rolled examples).

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