Adventures In Mapping

Some time ago, while I was working on a wood-looking map of undersea cables, my 10-year-old daughter Willow, who was mightily into the movie Trolls at the time, told me my map should be made out of felt instead of wood. So, here is that map, using a photo of a swatch of her craft … Continue reading Felt Map

I’ve been into hand drawing maps lately, to give as gifts. What a blast. I’ve found that the process is pretty cyclical, though as I use a GIS to prep for a hand drawn map, and then later was inspired by the results to create texture resources for GIS so I could make hand drawn … Continue reading There And Back Again. Dad’s Map as a path from digital to drawn and back to digital

Well, we have an all-SEC (yaaaawwwnnn, oh, pardon me) championship game. Here are how the two teams compare, by way of in-state players and Air Mile Index, by class… Actually, it is a pretty interesting match-up of recruiting footprints; the two programs have much different patterns. Alabama’s Air Mile index is typical of a top-tier … Continue reading CFB Championship

As is my way, I’ve made some Air Mile Index maps for the four 2017-18 playoff teams. Air Mile Index? Yes. Read all about the Air Mile Index, and the analysis of the four teams here. In the meantime, here are the maps, devoid of context… Continue reading College Football Playoff

I’ve been setting parameters for digital hillshade for years. And loving it. But when I got a close look at an actual graphite-on-paper sheet of hillshade from an unknown cartographer of the past I felt…jealous. This was the remarkable work of a master. And it was laid down with their mind and hand. The ideas … Continue reading Hillshade by Hand

I am prone to make digital maps that try to look like they are assembled from actual materials other than pixels and protocols. It’s because I like physical, tactile, maps. They are real in a way that digital maps aren’t. So I tried my hand at drawing a map for the first time since like, … Continue reading Map Made By Hand

To continue my apparent Great Lakes phase, I’ve made a map that looks like it was assembled from a stack of punch-cut cardstock paper layers to replicate lake bathymetry, like these eye-watering delights. Here is a how-to post if you are curious about the process or would like to download the source project, the data, … Continue reading Papercut Lake Map