New Amsterdam Style

On a recent trip to the Netherlands I had some chats about reviving a vintage style of Dutch waterway navigation and planning printed maps for use with current, digital, data. The inspiration came from Dirkzwager’s Guide, a book of local waterway maps.

Turns out the Dutch are really interested in waterway planning and the modifiable boundary of land and sea.

Here is an example of the wonderful waterway maps, from 1978…

I loved the crisp modern palette balanced by the artful hand-drawn landcover elements. Here’s a closer look…

So I sampled colors and created fill and line symbol features with a print-like texture and bleed. These are the style elements that comprise it…

When applied (admittedly pretty haphazardly) to New York City (New Amsterdam), for example, the style looks like this…

Fun!