Adventures In Mapping

I had the opportunity this past Monday to collaborate with my father on a series of maps. Of course, that’s just a great thing in itself, but what made it even more fun was that we were illustrating a section of a paper he wrote in 1992. In it, he and some of his geography … Continue reading Collaborating with Dad

Sure, you could make a map that looks like a globe. But the thing about globes is that they are round and live in the real world. What if you smacked a real world image behind your globish map to give is a palpable sense of context? Well, you just might fake people out, which … Continue reading Englobification

This map was one of a handful preliminary test map styles for a project. I was happy with the slightly lithographic quality and the strong framing of the state. You can follow the creation steps of this map here if you’d like to give the style a go for yourself, or if you’re just curious. … Continue reading Physical Map of Wyoming

Here is a multivariate dot density map of the Hispanic population of New York City, tinted by Census counts of national origin at the tract level. Knowing very little of the social fabric of NYC, this map provides some interesting footholds for questions. Maps don’t necessarily have to answer questions; the more interesting ones help … Continue reading The Hispanic Population of NYC

These are snapshots from a work in progress. I am trying to get a combination of factors right to kind-of/sort-of replicate the look of 19th century field-sketched maps of elevation. I am still working on adding a directional aspect to them (not shown), so they incorporate a bit of a hillshade dimension, like this awesome … Continue reading Experimenting with Vintage Contour Textures

Here is a map showing the area covered by water for US Census Tracts. Each dot represents the surface area of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools (because I, like most people probably, suck at visualizing/comprehending big square meter numbers). Here is a simple how-to, including a poignant letter penned to my old friend, Dot Density. Happy … Continue reading Water Dots

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