Colorado Springs artist and arborist Reynold Mackey on his decade of hand-carving accurate physiographic globes out of solid wood, how to translate a 2D topobathymetric map onto a sphere, art as family business, casting globes in bronze, chainsaw-carving to Hendrix and dental pick-carving to Debussy, why hard work is an ally to meaning, learning welding, leatherwork and paper lacquering to make globe enclosures, the acrobatic stillness of trees, and how, unsurprisingly, he “could never take any shortcuts.” See his work at globesculptor.com and @globesculptor on IG
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 10% off woven cotton map blankets with code 10OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Oregon lead cartographer and product manager Neil Allen talks atlas production with East View Geospatial’s Benchmark Maps, the years of mapmaking and months of ground-truthing required to create a Texas atlas, adventures in custom cartography (clients include the U.S. Coast Guard, The Cascadia Institute and an eccentric millionaire’s treasure hunt), the importance of asking the locals, using declassified naval data to map Monterey Canyon, and why sales and marketing is essential to a map business. See his work at benchmarkmaps.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 10% off woven cotton map blankets with code 10OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Ontario explorer, mapmaker, and conservationist Hap Wilson on drawing 400 guide maps across 50 years, traveling more than 40,000 miles of Canadian wilderness by canoe, the one digital tool he likes (it’s Google Earth), saving lives by creating a map that, unlike the one it replaced, did not send tourists over a waterfall, retracing thousand-year-old trails to prevent their effacement by dams and clearcuts, what you discover after 200 trips down the same river, learning from the mapmakers of 1700 and the indigenous of 700, and why if a portage on his map doesn’t match the territory it’s likely a force majeure situation (“I don’t control the beavers.”) See his work at hapwilson.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven cotton map blankets with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Colorado painter, illustrator and mapmaker Erick Ingraham on solving art directors’ problems, making it interesting for himself (“I’m known to make things more complicated than they might need to be”), spending eight years painting the Rockies’ western slope, working from his own photographs, taking inspiration from the past, getting into the culture of what he’s mapping, drawing coastlines, and some advice for developing artists: “Be a good draftsman.” See Erick’s work at erickingraham.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
London artist and mapmaker Stephen Walter on two decades of drawing and painting “the semiotic residues of humankind,” an invitation to map an Ivorian national park (and why you should wait for the dry season before attempting this), approaching six years of work on an NYC map, interpreting Michael Drayton’s 17th c. topographical poem Poly-Olbion into a 6x5 ft. folkloric tour of England and Wales, walking the territory, the origins of “north up,” the souls of places, a half-day's research to place a single label, and his vision of Utopia. See his work at stephenwalter.org
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Manhattan writer and cartographer John Tauranac on his first maps of Midtown’s pedestrian passages, a public debate with Massimo Vignelli (“His geography was egregious”), working at a very different MTA (they used to have an aesthetics committee?), the “no improvements” made to the subway map since he chaired the 1979 MTA map committee, guiding Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s helicopter photo surveys of Manhattan, walking every block and learning Illustrator to create his acclaimed 176-page Manhattan tourist guide, how to make a usable bus map, New York’s vanished map stores, and a longitudinal view of the business: “plus ça change, plus c'est la même bull████.” See his work at johntauranac.com
In early 2023 GIS analyst and cartographer Andrew Middleton saw a tweet about Andy Nosal’s search for someone to take over The Map Center, Nosal's map shop in Pawtucket, RI; six months later Middleton left California to move into one of the last map retail stores in the U.S. We discuss his goal of turning the shop into an inviting retail space and field trip destination, inciting new maps of New England with cartographic challenges, making space for local and expressive maps, and summing it all up with “This is a thing I get to do with my life; how amazing is that?” Bonus: former owner Andy Nosal joins us to drop pearls of retail wisdom and confirm that Andrew has the “irrational drive in the right direction” needed for this biz. Next time you're in Pawtucket drop by mapcenter.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Lyonnais illustrator and designer Lionel Portier on a mapmaking career that spans 30 years and five continents, accepting any map challenge an art director might conceive, a travel magazine gig that led to an Australian passport, painting 100 birds for a wetland park, his favorite territory to illustrate, spending three months on a 3x4-ft. map of Bruges, why he never carries a sketchbook on a walk, and conveying with his maps the “pleasure of seeing beautiful things.” See his work at lionelportier.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Utah artist Isaac Dushku on how a map has to evoke either a feeling of adventure or a feeling of home, the best- and worst-selling states in his catalog (he drew all 50), taking his business Lord of Maps from being ghosted on Facebook Marketplace to supporting his family, creating a board book of America’s highest peaks with a “ridiculously complicated” printing process, why your choice of labels will always upset someone, somewhere, and how if someone enjoys mountains these maps will “fit nicely into their heart.” See his work at lordofmaps.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Urbanist and illustrator Sam Usle on designing human-scale communities and rendering them in watercolors, why theme parks reflect a yearning for human-scale towns, redesigning part of his high school campus before graduation, why you can thank Le Corbusier for hideous Revit-default cities, the axonometric map that sold Disneyland, storytelling with facades, the history of Rome’s urban fabric, why master planning begins with the negative space, and how “you'd be hard-pressed to find an ugly city before 1930.” See his work at studioredcar.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Naomi Rosenberg, assistant director of the Media and Accessible Design Lab at San Francisco’s LightHouse for the Blind, discusses the art of making fingertip-readable maps: why clutter is the enemy of good tactile maps, the quest for an affordable embosser, being locked to 24 pt. type, creating large-scale accessible maps for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the OSM-filtering behind their Tactile Maps Automated Production software, why 3D-printed maps are (literally) painful for users, the barriers to high-res tactile displays, and how a good tactile designer needs to “forget about their eyes.”
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
New Haven architectural designer and artist Matthew Dean Shaffer on balancing accuracy with art, taking a break from straight lines to draw birds, software-driven homogeneity in American architecture (“Straight-out-of-Revit, as we say”), why he draws the vegetation last, how anything’s better for the urban fabric than a surface parking lot, and sacrificing for one’s maps (he went cross-eyed for a day after a marathon drawing session).
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Arlington “reformed architect” and pictorial cartographer Jamshid Kooros discusses his 30 years of mapmaking based on photographs, sketching and “walking, walking, walking,” the end of the drop-in pitch, turning three-week hikes into maps of French cities and castles, doing his own paper engineering for a pop-up map of Washington D.C., spending nine months on his Santa Fe map (which irked some locals), and being warned away from Civil War battlefield maps (“The buffs know every rock and tree and they will find a mistake.”) See his work at koorosmaps.com/welcome.html
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Stafford cartographer and entrepreneur David Kulbeth on reviving old map aesthetics with his digital-to-copperplate-to-print-to-watercolor technique, the (costly) difference between copperplate etching and engraving, finding a custom papermaker, keeping his art affordable, finding style inspiration in 12 moving boxes of cartography books, and making high-craft maps of “modern places in an antique style.” See his work at columbuscartography.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Fish Creek artist and gallery owner Sophie Parr on creating more than one hundred 0.5"-to-the-mile maps using aerial imagery and a 0.2mm-tip pen, why she only accepts 2x2" commissions (while working on her own 2x3 ft. map of Chicago), representing a variety of landscapes within the constraints of black ink, when returning a client’s deposit feels so good, why she won’t work in color, how discipline will get you farther than enthusiasm, curating other artists’ work to exhibit in her Door County gallery, and how often she hears “I have never seen anyone do something like this.” See her work at mapsbysophie.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Sandpoint cartographer Lee France on making his first topos in Chile, spending months on a single map for National Geographic Trails Illustrated, the challenge of making an attractive interactive map that includes every scale from hilltop to hemisphere, how an up-to-date cadastral layer can make or break your hunting map, how his team of technical cartographers at OnX maintains three discrete map products, and the high-stoke activities his users get up to. See his work at leefrance.me
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Atlanta visual artist, sculptor and “topophiliac” Gregor Turk on walking 250 miles of the U.S./Canada border, creating landscapes with clay, wood and recycled inner tubes, turning Landsat imagery into hundreds of hand-painted ceramic tiles, making 1:1 scale maps, chasing phantom streets, fighting real estate developers’ efforts to erase Blandtown, confusing Beltline tourists with “misinformation” wayfinding maps, and “pushing the idea of what a map can be.” See his work at gregorturk.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Leesburg cartographer Tom Patterson on his decades creating visitor maps for the National Park Service (there’s a good chance his work is crumpled in your glovebox), learning to draw terrain by corresponding with an artist in Scotland, why he doesn’t lament the passing of 70s-era production techniques, how to map a piedmont glacier using satellite imagery, convincing the Park Service to give away their map files (then making it happen himself during a rained-out vacation), why he releases his designs into the public domain, how “pretty map” used to be an insult, preferring modern maps over antiques, and how “right now is the golden age of cartography.” See his work at shadedrelief.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
St Leonards map producer/founder Melinda Clarke and Melbourne illustrator Deborah Young Monk discuss their collaborations across more than three decades, how to tell an artist they need to redraw three months of work, scouting territory by car, helicopter and hot air balloon, more than a week spent editing a 4x3 ft. map with a scalpel, selling maps door-to-door out of a suitcase, a very profitable shipping container full of puzzles, Melinda’s break from the map business to run a fish farm, getting the next generation to make maps, and how “the beauty of the [1987 Melbourne map] project is we had no idea what we were doing.” See their maps at themelbournemap.com.au
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
Lewes/Berlin graphic artist and “exuberant mapmaker” Neil Gower on painting an estate plan when the grounds are unfinished, the work that gives him a “hum in the pelvis,” what Frank Zappa has in common with high-effort fake maps, an abandoned 5x5 ft. map of Venice that was more enjoyable to ground-truth than to draw, combining lunar toponymy with 1600s Italian map style, a trip to Barcelona on Conde Nast’s dime, and emphatically not illustrating his memoir about starting in a Welsh coal town and ending up in the chalk country of Lewes. See his work at neilgower.com
Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast. See what good maps can do for you at themapconsultancy.com
I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps. See ultra-detailed backlit maps at radiantmaps.co
Time for some map gifts: get 15% off woven map blankets and backlit map decor with code 15OFF, everything ships free – https://www.etsy.com/shop/RadiantMaps?coupon=15OFF
