Adventures In Mapping

I’m just having fun seeing what these look like. They are mega-easy so buckle up and prepare for more. Continue reading The Rivers of Europe

I am impressed by the “Principle Rivers/Mountains/Lakes” map diagrams that were so popular in the mid 1800s and have been curious about how I might reproduce that aesthetic without etching on copper plates and hand tinting. Then I saw a tweet which led me to this article in Nature Communications about the top plastic waste contributing … Continue reading Rivers of Plastic

I’m a big fan of Heather Smith’s woodcut block-print map of the Annapolis River. She and I have been collaborating on a series of blog posts describing how she made it, and how I tried to replicate it digitally. Here’s my effort: Up next on in the series is Heather describing the creation and application … Continue reading Woodcut Block-Print Map

Here is a really important map riddled with little Chernoff-like faces. It’s just such a fun data set, I can’t help myself. Here is a bit of a how-to, if you are Chernoff-inclined. In the meantime, here’s a close-up of those faces (drawn in Illustrator)! Cheers! John Continue reading Beer vs Wine Chernoff Map

This map, made in collaboration with Jinnan Zhang, monitors active wildfires in the United States. It shows fires by their physical size, and displays age and containment percent. The timeline orders the fires by age. The grid view orders fires by their physical footprint. Zooming in to a fire shows its perimeter. Visit the app … Continue reading Active Fires

One of the most exciting parts of participating in a large online course about cartography is the sheer coolness that gets shared by others in the forum. Lindsey H., of Linden, VA, and, independently, Francis Baum, of University City, MO, recently shared maps they’d made in the Cartography MOOC where they had color-keyed earthquakes by … Continue reading Quake Depth & Plate Motion