Excuse me?
You get what you pay for: Very Expensive Maps is a podcast by cartographer Evan Applegate in which he interviews better cartographers.
Remember: you can, and should, make your own maps.
💰Shill Zone💰
- Need maps for your org’s reports, decks, walls and events? The Map Consultancy makes real nice maps, real fast.
- I have three words for you: Big. Glowing. Maps. Depending on how that makes you feel, you might like two more words: Radiant Maps.
Anyone I should talk to? Let me know below or via veryexpensivemaps at gmail dot com
Reno cartographer and outdoorsman Aaron Taveras on why he started making his own trail maps, “taking [his] sweet time” to create a hyper-detailed monochrome 4x5’ map of Nevada landforms, beginning a map with the raster data, an inspiring backcountry ski atlas, teaching cartography by disassembling National Park maps, and the beauty of low-amenity public lands.
- Kalmiopsis Wilderness trail map
- Grand Teton map
- “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”
- Eduard shaded relief generator
- Avenza MAPublisher
- Avenza Geographic Imager
- Natural Scene Designer
- QGIS
- ESRI ArcGIS Pro
- U.S. Forest Service GIS data clearinghouse
- U.S. Geological Survey: The National Map
- National Land Cover Dataset
- National Park Service’s Adobe Illustrator files
- Bernhard Jenny
- Alex McPhee (see ep. 6)
- Tom Patterson
- Eduard Imhof
- Mike Hall (see ep. 3)
- Joost Grootens
- Geodetic Institute of Slovenia
- Raven Maps & Images
- Helvetic Backcountry Atlas
- NACIS conference
Redwood City cartographer and artist Jake Coolidge on making maps the hard way with ink, graphite, a metal scribe, copper, wax and ferric chloride, the difference between in silico and in vivo cartographic generalization, creating novel projections with two-point perspective, learning to letter backwards, training the eye before you train your mouse hand, how a mapmaking process will teach you something about the landscape, and his efforts to combine the handmade with the digital.
- 15x11” Mt. Rainier: intaglio print from a copper plate etching
- 55x13.5” California: pencil and ink on paper
- 32x17” Columbia River Watershed: pencil and ink on paper
- 60x15” Western Shore of Lake Michigan: pencil and ink on paper
- Speculative bay area transit map
- Oakland bike route map
- DeLorme road atlas
- Stanford Spatial History Project
- QGIS
- Richard Edes Harrison
- Erwin Raisz
- Print Zero Studios
- Nikki Jabbora-Barber
- Harry Beck’s London Tube Map
- Eduard Imhof
- Daniel Huffman (taught me how to map 🙏)
- Amy Lee Walton
- Mamata Akella
- Jim Eynard
- Joe Milbrath
- Alex Fries
- Tom Patterson
- Becca Holdhusen
- Nolli map of Rome
- Turgot map of Paris
- NACIS conference
Olympia cartographer and graphics editor Dan Coe on his journey from Alaska sea kayak guide to geomorphology storyteller, what you learn in an office (and family) full of geologists, getting laid off and traveling the world for a year, how the paths of ancient glaciers shaped his neighborhood, the hidden landscapes revealed by infrared laser pulses, and how a few minutes at work adjusting one color ramp seeded hundreds of beautiful river images.
- LIDAR visualizations of shifting streambeds
- Mount St. Helens—A Mountain Reborn
- How LIDAR works
- DOGAMI
- Washington Geological Survey
- 1:24k WA geology map by Coe
- Dee Molenaar
- Tau Rho Alpha
- National Natural Landmark Program
- Quick Terrain Modeler
- QGIS
- Heinrich Berann
- Marie Tharp
- Tom Patterson
- Maddy Grubb
- Marty Schnure
- Carl Churchill (see episode 12)
- ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop
- NACIS conference
Nelson artist-cartographer Anton Thomas discusses his travels from Utah to the Himalayas, creating “that mix of serious cartography and serious art,” logging his drawing time with a stopwatch, collecting photo references for 1,500 species, how drawing the little cartouche map-within-a-map can get out of hand, and closing on three years of work to finish his 40x24" map of the world.
Cupertino cartographer, designer and artist Nat Slaughter on using hardcore wildlife survey techniques to count squirrels with Jamie Allen, putting sound installations in shipping containers, the two years of shoe-leather data collection that went into his 5x2’ Central Park map, his desire to walk from Basel to the North Sea, how a one-hour deadline can have (occasionally) sublime results, and an 800-year-old map that feels like it was created yesterday.
- Central Park map: terrestrial
- Central Park map: celestial
- Squirrel Census 2012
- Squirrel Census 2016
- Squirrel Census 2019
Discussed and inspiring:
- George Colbert and Guenther Vollath’s map of Prospect Park
- Vaux & Olmstead’s Central Park map
- Egbert Viele’s Manhattan maps
- Otto Sibeth’s Central Park map
- John Cage
- Iannis Xenakis
- Nat’s made-in-45-minutes map
- Eleanor Lutz
- Yu Ji Tu: 1137 map of China
- Grilli Type
- Klim Type
- Peutinger Table: map of Roman roads from 1200
- Nina Bender
- Catalogtree
- Rudolf Leuzinger
- Joost Grootens
- Irene Stracuzzi
- Anna van Westerstee Beek
- Charles Minard
- Eleanor Lutz
- Eduard Imhof
- Zürcher Verkehrsverbund transit maps
- AJ Ashton
- IGN
- Japanese Coast Guard
Penobscot, Maine mapmaker Jane Crosen discusses her 40+ year cartographic career, the sound advice of “when in doubt, leave it out,” creating spoof maps for the nautical market, producing two expanded and rearranged editions of George Colby's 1881 atlases of Downeast Maine counties, becoming “[her] own typesetting machine” with a calligraphy pen, the feeling of looking through an airplane window at the landscape she’s drawn so many times, and her “paste-up” map design process that involves a light table, a proportional scale wheel, a pica ruler, mylar, pencils, a 000 brush and india ink. You won’t be surprised to learn this interview was conducted via landline.
- Penobscot Bay to Schoodic Pt.
- East Penobscot Bay
- Friendship to Vinalhaven
- Two-color posters
- Sea of Iniquity parody map
- Seal Harbor parody map
- Her updated re-issue of Colby’s Atlas of Hancock County, Maine, 1881
- Her map for Camden National Corporation
- Her cookbook
- A 3-color USGS topo: Ellsworth, ME
- Osher Map Library
- Maine Down East Ice Age Trail Map
- Augustus Phillips
- Margaret Pearce
- Michael Hermann
- Jamshid Kooros
Madrid architect and mapmaker Jug Cerović discusses the transit cartographer’s ability to shape reality, drawing hundreds of bus lines by hand, mapping first and visiting later, installing guerrilla maps in his hometown of Belgrade, organizing a new map conference, helping Apple create a good public transit layer, and how seeing Istakhri’s 1,100-year-old maps will make one feel like a tyro.
- Madrid multimodal transit map
- Tokyo metro map
- London metro map
- Belgrade transit map
- Designboom article (which stirred up a lot of business)
- Transit Mapping Symposium
- DezignTechnic: the Dubai wayfinding company he works with
- Middle Constellation book
- One Metro World book
- Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World
- Richard Archambault
- Sasha Trubetskoy
- Istakhri
- Piri Reis
- Padrón Real
Somerset pen-and-ink artist Jeff Murray discusses sketching across the world during his ski bum years, selling his first print off a folding table in New Zealand, drawing in ten-hour chunks, the joy of selling art out of a gazebo, why he works at the continental scale, playing with perspective, his two hand-painted globes, and the choice words people have when his hyper-detailed maps don’t include their particular landmark.
New Jersey cartographer and Wall Street Journal graphics editor Carl Churchill talks his map vocation and EDM avocation, spending two weeks on an elaborate wildflower-detection remote sensing script before an editor (correctly) tossed it, making fantasy maps with GIS tools, what drum loops taught him about radar interferometry, why "get paid to do what you love" will make you fall out of love, and how you can make beautiful maps with a good inspo board, a tolerance for academic papers and a willingness to try.
- Glen Canyon Mœbius-palette map
- Ouray County Imhof-style map
- Carl’s tutorial on creating fantasy maps with real data
- QGIS RVT toolbox
- Profile curvature
- Californias wet year superbloom
- ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop
- Avenza MAPublisher
- ArcGIS Pro
- QGIS
- National Land Cover Database
- Charlie Loyd’s remote sensing data compendium
Cartographers he recommends:
Columbia designer, illustrator and country songwriter Elliot Park on his ten year quest to hydraulically press a good map into good materials. Discussed: the lack of texture in today’s stuff, moving from DEM to CNC to a big beautiful copper/leather map, learning by (expensive) trial, and the challenge of creating lasting art that’s meant to be touched.
- 25x60" pressed leather elevation map of Tennessee
- 32x42" pressed copper map of NYC
- Columbia Machine Works: get your own 520-ton hydraulic press
- Bellerby & Co. hand-painted globes
- Carved Earth: hand-carved physiographic globes
- The Lord of Maps
- The Mediaeval Mapmaker
- My hand-lettered map of the Tongass National Forest
Tacoma map artist and chorographer Kirsten Sparenborg discusses her deep catalog of maps in ink and watercolor, her years in architectural illustration, an ill-starred mural commission, making her own pigments out of local rocks, and her next 10-panel 46 sq. ft. project.
- New Orleans watercolor block map
- 3x3 ft. Boston watercolor block map
- Ink street map of Baltimore
- Sottile & Sottile, where she made architectural drawings
- Sanborn Insurance Maps
- Ink bird's-eye map of Eastport, Maine
- Cheyenne Mallo’s map ceramics
- Radiant Maps: my backlit ultra-detailed maps
- Jesse Kennedy’s enormous oeuvre of hand-drawn maps
Artists she likes:
