Adventures In Mapping

The freezing of Arctic and Antarctic waters is a seasonal pulse of our planet. The maps below show ice extents, per month, since 1979. This map shows 40 years of sea ice extents, color-coded by month . It’s interesting to see the oscillation between the opposite seasons of the North and South Poles. As the … Continue reading Historic Sea Ice Extents

Well shoot, I was just digging around my folders for something else and discovered this hillshade amplified map of a portion of the Grand Canyon that I did a couple years ago and forgot about. Anyway, I thought it was kind of neat so here it is, somewhat unforgotten… Happy Mapping! John Continue reading Random Map of the Grand Canyon

Are are some snapshots of a method using a handful of offset hillshade angles, each with a neighboring color wheel color. The result is a chromatic optical sense of surface elevation. Slightly different than a flattened single-band multidirectional method and way different than an aspect map. If you are interested in how do to it … Continue reading Throwing Shade: Gallery

Here are some examples of using selective hillshading styles based on a Glaciers masking layer. Glacial hillshade is icy and non-glacial hillshade is earthy. Here’s a how-to. Southern Andes… Southern Greenland… Alaska Range… Alps… Caucasus… Western Himalayas… Here’s a shoddy video if you are inclined to give it a go… Continue reading Selective Hillshading

Here is a scan of a tall accordion-style journal map of the Appalachian Trail. JK, it’s all digital. If you are interested in learning how.why it was made, you can check out the nerdy how-to here. In the meantime, wouldn’t this actually be a pretty cool thing to have printed? Continue reading Appalachian Trail Map Journal

Here is a map of Panama made for a page in a book that introduces a section on Panama. It just had to be a sort of physical reference intro map…and the page is roughly square. So, with few requirements, a challenging artboard proportion, and a whim to go tilty 3D, this is my first … Continue reading A Map of Panama

Here is a vintage style poster of Yellowstone, blending a beautiful hand-drawn grayscale hillshade by Bill von Allmen in 1983, from the Shaded Relief Archive, and modern satellite imagery. I recorded it so you can join me for a highly polished professionally produced and narrated walk-through of georeferencing, coloring, and arranging this poster… So fun. … Continue reading Vintage-Style Yellowstone Poster