Sometimes I’ll spend a fair amount of time getting a map just right. Then a little cartographic muse whispers into my ear…how would a dark version of this map look? Do I have to start over replacing all the symbology to a dark (or light) version? Not necessarily. Here is a lovely plate of birds, accessed from the Boston … Continue reading Create a Light or Dark Version of Any Map in Two Seconds
Ah those 80s movies that made us squirm with the real threat of automation run amok but then heave a sigh of relief when the kid teaches the computer that the only way to win a global thermonuclear exchange is to not get into one. Those war rooms are always the best. Dark places with … Continue reading How to Make an 80s War Room Map
Often I find the best way of understanding something is to try to imagine its opposite. There’s probably a word for that in the field of rhetoric, but I don’t know what it is. So I’ll just imagine that I do. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been asked by two different folks about … Continue reading Flipping the World Inside Out, with Guest Cartographer Sparrow
Hello! Here is a hillshaded terrain map of Costa Rica. I’ve never been there, but I’d like to see it someday. Click this image if you’d like to save it as a full-sized jpeg (10MB)… If you are feeling dangerous, here’s a GeoTIFF file (97MB) that you can add to your map project. And if … Continue reading The Terrain of Costa Rica
A while back my family went to see the animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon. It got mixed reviews from the Nelsons but what really caught my eye was the illustrative cartographic scene used to introduce the back story. It used a charming paper puppet theater aesthetic; the wavy water patterns were especially beautiful. When you are … Continue reading Make Waves
Here is a diorama micro-world sort of thing of the Delmarva Peninsula. It was made for the Delmarva GIS Conference. It’s the dimensions of your monitor, if you wanted to use it as a desktop image. If you are curious about how to make something like this, there are a couple YouTube videos available here … Continue reading A Delmarva Peninsula Micro World
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
Adventures In Mapping 