Very Expensive Maps

Cupertino cartographer, designer and artist Nat Slaughter on using hardcore wildlife survey techniques to count squirrels with Jamie Allen, putting sound installations in shipping containers, the two years of shoe-leather data collection that went into his 5x2’ Central Park map, his desire to walk from Basel to the North Sea, how a one-hour deadline can have (occasionally) sublime results, and an 800-year-old map that feels like it was created yesterday. See Nat’s work at thesquirrelcensus.com

• Central Park map: terrestrial
• Central Park map: celestial
• Squirrel Census 2012
• Squirrel Census 2016
• Squirrel Census 2019

• George Colbert and Guenther Vollath’s map of Prospect Park
• Vaux & Olmstead’s Central Park map
• Egbert Viele’s Manhattan maps
• Otto Sibeth’s Central Park map
• John Cage
• Iannis Xenakis
• Nat’s made-in-45-minutes map
• Eleanor Lutz
• Yu Ji Tu: 1137 map of China
• Grilli Type
• Klim Type
• Peutinger Table: map of Roman roads from 1200
• Nina Bender
• Catalogtree
• Rudolf Leuzinger
• Joost Grootens
• Irene Stracuzzi
• Anna van Westerstee Beek
• Charles Minard
• Eleanor Lutz
• Eduard Imhof
• Zürcher Verkehrsverbund transit maps
• AJ Ashton
• IGN
• Japanese Coast Guard

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

Penobscot, Maine mapmaker Jane Crosen discusses her 40+ year cartographic career, the sound advice of “when in doubt, leave it out,” creating spoof maps for the nautical market, producing two expanded and rearranged editions of George Colby's 1881 atlases of Downeast Maine counties, becoming “[her] own typesetting machine” with a calligraphy pen, the feeling of looking through an airplane window at the landscape she’s drawn so many times, and her “paste-up” map design process that involves a light table, a proportional scale wheel, a pica ruler, mylar, pencils, a 000 brush and india ink. You won’t be surprised to learn this interview was conducted via landline. See Jane’s work at mainemapmaker.com

• Penobscot Bay to Schoodic Pt.
• East Penobscot Bay
• Friendship to Vinalhaven
• Two-color posters
• Sea of Iniquity parody map
• Seal Harbor parody map
• Her updated re-issue of Colby’s Atlas of Hancock County, Maine, 1881
• Her map for Camden National Corporation
• Her cookbook
• A 3-color USGS topo: Ellsworth, ME
• Osher Map Library
• Maine Down East Ice Age Trail Map
• Augustus Phillips
• Margaret Pearce
• Michael Hermann
• Jamshid Kooros

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

Madrid architect and mapmaker Jug Cerović discusses the transit cartographer’s ability to shape reality, drawing hundreds of bus lines by hand, mapping first and visiting later, installing guerrilla maps in his hometown of Belgrade, organizing a new map conference, helping Apple create a good public transit layer, and how seeing Istakhri’s 1,100-year-old maps will make one feel like a tyro. See his work at jugcerovic.com

• Madrid multimodal transit map
• Tokyo metro map
• London metro map
• Belgrade transit map
• Designboom article (which stirred up a lot of business)
• Transit Mapping Symposium
• DezignTechnic: the Dubai wayfinding company he works with
• Middle Constellation book
• One Metro World book
• Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World
• Richard Archambault
• Sasha Trubetskoy
• Istakhri
• Piri Reis
• Padrón Real

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

Somerset pen-and-ink artist Jeff Murray discusses sketching across the world during his ski bum years, selling his first print off a folding table in New Zealand, drawing in ten-hour chunks, the joy of selling art out of a gazebo, why he works at the continental scale, playing with perspective, his two hand-painted globes, and the choice words people have when his hyper-detailed maps don’t include their particular landmark. See Jeff's work at jeffmurray.co.uk

• “The City of Europe”
• “London”
• “New York”
• “The Big Apple”
• “The City of North America”
• “The Eclectic Frontier”
• “A Greek Odyssey”
• Bellerby & Co Globemakers
• Carved Earth

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

Union City cartographer and Wall Street Journal graphics editor Carl Churchill talks his map vocation and EDM avocation, spending two weeks on an elaborate wildflower-detection remote sensing script before an editor (correctly) tossed it, making fantasy maps with GIS tools, what drum loops taught him about radar interferometry, why "get paid to do what you love" will make you fall out of love, and how you can make beautiful maps with a good inspo board, a tolerance for academic papers and a willingness to try. See his maps at churchillgeo.com

• Glen Canyon Mœbius-palette map 
• Ouray County Imhof-style map 
• Eduard Imhof’s maps
• Carl’s tutorial on making your own
• Carl’s tutorial on creating fantasy maps with real data
• QGIS RVT toolbox 
• Profile curvature
• Californias wet year superbloom
• ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop
• Avenza MAPublisher
• ArcGIS Pro
• QGIS
• National Land Cover Database
• Charlie Loyd’s remote sensing data compendium

Cartographers he recommends:

• Aileen Buckley 
• Josie Sajbel 
• Clare Trainor
• Christina Shintani 
• Emma Brown 
• Becca Holdhusen 
• Lauren Tierney 
• Júlia Ledur 
• Marie Patino 
• Wanmei Liang 
• Maddy Grubb
• John Nelson  
• Cooper Thomas 
• Tom Patterson

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 the most beautiful 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

Columbia designer, illustrator, artisan and country songwriter Elliot Park on his ten year quest to hydraulically press a good map into good materials. Discussed: the lack of texture in today’s stuff, moving from DEM to CNC to a big beautiful copper/leather map, learning by (expensive) trial, the quest for a leather globe, and the challenge of creating lasting art that’s meant to be touched. See his leather and copper maps at columbiapressworks.com

• 25x60" pressed leather elevation map of Tennessee
• 32x42" pressed copper map of NYC
• Columbia Machine Works: get your own 520-ton hydraulic press
• Bellerby & Co. hand-painted globes
• Carved Earth: hand-carved physiographic globes
• The Lord of Maps
• The Mediaeval Mapmaker
• My hand-lettered map of the Tongass National Forest

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 the most beautiful 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

Tacoma map artist and chorographer Kirsten Sparenborg discusses her huge body of work in ink and watercolor, her years in architectural illustration, an ill-starred mural commission, making her own pigments out of local rocks, and her next 10-panel 46 sq. ft. project. See her work at turnofthecenturies.com

• New Orleans watercolor block map
• 3x3 ft. Boston watercolor block map
• Ink street map of Baltimore
• Sottile & Sottile, where she made architectural drawings
• Sanborn Insurance Maps
• Ink bird's-eye map of Eastport, Maine
• Cheyenne Mallo’s map ceramics
• Radiant Maps: my backlit ultra-detailed maps

Artists she likes:

• Heather Bird Harris
• Marc Boyson
• Place Value Pottery
• The Lost Borough

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 the most beautiful 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

Lisbon transit cartographer and designer Aurélien Boyer-Moraes talks learning to use a computer at 19, creating his first 3x4 ft. transit map of an imagined Brazilian city after reading Jacques Bertin’s Semiology of Graphics cover-to-cover, preempting Google Street View in Lyon with his 6x6 Seagull camera, ten years of designing transit maps for French cities with Attoma, and his heavily-annotated collection of 2,100 transit and city maps (which he might let you see someday.) See his maps at https://transit-map.com/
Indented below are Aurélien’s notes on my notes (he is, as you can imagine, a precise man).

• Transit maps originally designed by Aurélien
• Metz, and Aurélien’s original design 
• “The colors were imposed, there was no discussion, the use of these specific colors was mandatory because they were the new colors of the authority overseeing the transport in the agglomeration. They do not convey any specific information, which is against my general ‘credo’, but we had to use them in the map.”
• Toulouse
• “My map had a strong palette which was consistent with the offer (the headways and the span of service) as you can see in the original from sept 2013, but it was scrapped in-house.”
• Dijon
• “A picture of a bus stop with the maps displayed (plan schématique général and the city center) and a pdf of an early version of the paper maps as they were issued in three different configurations: North, SE and SW (SO for sud-ouest), only the geographic map changed accordingly, the plan schématique remained the same, it was the reference. This initial configuration was irrelevant for a city of this size (250,000 inhabitants), then they reversed back to a single issue with, on one side the schéma + the center + information, and overleaf the geographic map.”
• Lyon, and Aurélien’s original design
• Milan street map, completed in under two weeks
• Lisbon bus, tram and subway map
• Marseilles transit as of 1957
• Vignelli’s 1972 NYC subway map (cropped seven years later without his input, quelle horreur!)
• “I have a lot of respect for the early version of the map that the MTA committee led by Tauranac (with Michael Hertz as designer) released in 1979 (and was left almost untouched until the 1990s).
  One of the most relevant features of this map was the introduction of a very well thought out color code system by trunk in Mahanttan, which finally served also Vignelli since it makes his redesign of 2008 even more efficient! I am not a ‘blind pro-Vignelli, all against-1979 map.’ It is way more subtle than that.
  Although the 1979 map evolved in such a wrong way since the mid-1990s, that today it is a spaghetti plate, and the redesign—first with the weekender and then with the opening of the first section of the 2nd subway line (after the demise of Vignelli)—by Cifuentes-Waterhouse in 2017 is more than ever powerfull thanks to the work of the 1979 committee.”
• Jarret Walker: a transit planning consultancy
• Sanborn insurance maps of Manhattan
• Two cartographers Aurélien would like to honor:

• “A Frenchman (for once) civil engineer from the prestigious École des ponts et chaussées, from the 19th century Charles-Joseph Minard (1781-1870) whose work is stilll pretty obscure to the general public, I learnt about him while reading The Visual Quantitative Display of Quantitative Information by Tufte, and you can easily find information about his impressive charts on the www.”
• “A Swiss designer (alive) who worked mostly in France, Rudi Meyer, he designed the 1976 splendid RER diagram and the French Railway system map that was on display from the late 1970s until 2011 in the trains.

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 the most beautiful backlit maps at radiantmaps.co

Philadelphia cartographer and New York Times graphics editor Bill Marsh describes his 30-year project to map his adopted city, his collection of hyper-dense axonometric maps, getting the Philadelphia Inquirer to chopper a photographer over the city for him, and the bygone days of hand-inked editorial maps (an early project: illustrating the nuclear annihilation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.) You can buy his magisterial map of Philadelphia for $7 from https://store.philamuseum.org/philadelphia-pictorial-map-and-walking-guide/

• Pics of his 3x2ft absurdly detailed map of Philadelphia: every building facade, bus lines, restaurants, bathrooms, subways, the Rocky steps, it has it all
• Buy it now for only seven bucks
• Inspiration for his map: Constantine Anderson’s map of Manhattan
• Hermann Bollmann’s map of Manhattan
• Tadashi Ishihara’s map of Manhattan
• His preferred printer: The Standard Group
• Transit maps by Jug Cerovic
• Larry Buchanan, who gifted me Bill’s map and made this episode happen <3

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 the most beautiful 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

Green Pond wildlife biologist and map designer for New World Cartography discusses working with artist Tony Waters, radio-tracking northern bobwhites (quail) under the pines of the Conecuh National Forest, memorializing Aldo the Llewellin Setter on a map of game birds, and agreeing to a 9x14-ft project before knowing exactly how to uh, install a 9x14-ft project (it turned out great). See Folk’s maps at newworldcartography.com

• Oysters of North America map
• Upland Game Birds map
• The family business: Folk Land Management
• Port Royal Sound Foundation
• Maps by Union Army topographical engineer Robert Knox Sneden
• Books of maps curated from the Library of Congress by Vincent Virga
• Underwater feature toponymic authority: GEBCO-SCUFN

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 the most beautiful 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