There is something meditative and wonderful about seeing…and making…hillshades. A nice hillshade can turn a map from something…not hillshaded…to something dripping with tactile charm. And there are all sorts of tones and techniques out there, each with a bit of a different feel. Here’s a playlist of 38 (and counting) videos showing different ways to make, use, … Continue reading Fun Ambient Hillshade
Oh my goodness, did you know that Esri’s chief scientist, Dr. Dawn Wright, is going to the bottom of Challenger Deep this summer? In order to help wrap our brains around this area of our undersea world, here is a “micro world” of Challenger Deep… It is a 5x vertically-exaggerated cube extract of the deepest part … Continue reading Challenger Deep Micro World
Last summer I had the amazing chance to spend a half hour or so with my son, Bear, collaborating on a little 3D elevation-extrusion illustration sort of graphic that I’d been wondering about. Then a bit later I saw a luscious bathymetric cutaway graphic created by Aldo Lopez for the GIS Day poster last year. It just looked so … Continue reading How to Make a 3D Diorama in ArcGIS Pro
Contour lines rule. Here’s how to punch them up with some insane hachure and shadow tricks. 0:00 Yes, it is…literally…freezing here in the glorious Mitten State. So much so that I sometimes don a fuzzy hat while the shed warms up. Speaking of absurd fuzzy hats, what if we made some absurd fuzzy contour lines? Let’s begin. … Continue reading Weird Trippy Terraced Contour Lines
This project, and blog post, were made in collaboration with Chris Cappelli. What a time to be alive. Humans have harnessed the laser. Without question the single greatest application of this profound new technology is its incorporation into consumer grade arts and crafts laser cutters. Naturally, geographers have a thing or two to add to … Continue reading From GIS to Glowforge: 3D Printed Terrain for Map Nerds
Over the past couple of years I’ve been so happy and honored to make sample maps of the Spilhaus World Ocean Map, to help spread the word about this wonderful perspective dreamed up by Athelstan Spilhaus and mathemagically interpreted by David Burrows and Bojan Šavrič (outstanding Esri colleagues) so it could be slung out to … Continue reading Spilhaus World Ocean Map: vector assets for designers
It’s that time of year (again, and again, and again) when geographers drop their Secchi Disks into pools of eggnog, bake north arrow-shaped gingerbread cookies, and sling surprisingly capable consumer-grade drones as prizes at office parties. We gather close and warm our hands next to our laptop fans, wishing each other rich topologies and complete metadata in … Continue reading Make this Papercraft Globe Please
Remember that feeling you got in your first remote sensing class when Dr. Grossa told you about the wavelengths of light and how blue scatters more easily than red which is why the sky is blue and sunsets are red and you just couldn’t wait to impress your friends and family with this specialized bit … Continue reading Riffing with Light and Shadow
Ah, the map that keeps on giving. I made the first version of this thing nine years ago now. Nine years? It shows hurricanes since 1851, in an atypical projection so that historical hurricanes coalesce into one big storm of storms. This map has served as a “stretch goal” for students taking the Cartography mooc, so … Continue reading How to Make this Map of Hurricanes Since 1851
I had the chance to join Ta Taneka and Wayne Lee-Archer from Esri Australia again to chat about mapping and making and sharing resources with the mapping community. I always have a lot of fun with these wonderful folks and it was an honor to be part of the conversation. You can find their podcast … Continue reading GIS Directions Podcast with Ta Taneka and Wayne Lee-Archer
