Following 3-months of research and hard work, British illustrator Jenni Sparks has created a fantastic hand-drawn map featuring the lovely city of New York. The piece repeats the talents we saw in her earlier effort creating a map of London, with this version perhaps even surpassing that fine work. Bold lines trace her 3D renditions of the city’s famous architecture, from the Flat Iron building to the Empire State Building; and locations like Union Square to Central Park. [Read more...]
Heading home for the holidays? Maybe your folks live back in Brooklyn, or maybe they live out in the sticks. Just how far and where could you get if the NYC subway lines were laid end-to-end in one direction? [Read more...]
By just about any standard, 2012 was a massive year for U.S. wildfires. According to data from both the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and NASA, over 9.1 million acres burned this year… and that was only tracking until November 30th. That figure places 2012 as the 3rd most wildfire filled year since 1960, and with the total number of fires being 55,505 – a relatively low number – the year holds the current record for the largest average fire size. [Read more...]
Ed Fairburn takes connect the dots to a whole new level with maps and a writing utensil. The artist uses a pen or pencil, connecting streets, rivers, and highways with cross hash marks and shading, to reveal faces within the topography of the map. He studies the physical features of the terrain and the facial features of his subjects and attempts to bring both together in synchronicity by seeking out their related patterns. His cartographic images have been exhibited at the Cowbridge Music Festival and used for charity work in the Zambia Project. [Read more...]
This just in: swedes love their milk… big time. This map made a splash on Reddit recently when it was pointed out that there is some serious love for the white beverage in the northern european country, as well as its neighbor Finland, the Netherlands, Greece and Switzerland. Ranking low on this map: China. [Read more...]
These illustrations from Helsinki Finland born illustrator Lotta Nieminen, have a positively refreshing happiness to them. Perhaps it’s the heavy dose of mid-century nostalgia in their retro aesthetic, or maybe it’s the often intoxicating world-travel themes which so often appear in her work. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could take the most un-appealing places and – using her highly textured minimalist style – distill them down into something desirable and charming. [Read more...]
Every 4 years, as Americans rush to the polls and cast their vote for a new president, we’re familiar with seeing the typical U.S. maps of red and blue denoting how states are favoring each candidate. But what information does this really give us? With the electoral college having only a portion of electors allotted to each state (based on that states population) the actual voting power of a state has little to do with its geographical size. How can we look at this differently and get a more informed look at what’s going on? [Read more...]
Before you write this project off as another example of the multitude of huge Lego projects around the web, consider the unique way this wildly vertical map of Japan was made. In celebration of the block-based building systems 50th year, the company’s Japanese subsidiary sponsored a nation wide building project which saw the participation of over 5000 kids in 6 different regions to create the piece. [Read more...]
Check out Google’s latest gadget: the Street View Trekker! It’s a backpack-mounted, panorama grabbing camera that will be used to map off-road trails. The device runs on two lithium batteries for an entire day and weighs under 40 pounds. Luc Vincent, the Engineering director, has already taken it skiing and has hopes of taking it to the Grand Canyon, Venice, and numerous other places in the future. With Google Earth, it will allow people to take virtual of tours of places they may never have the endurance, ability, or time to see. Google is also working towards having all of their maps offline, so they can be accessed even when a device is out of range for 3g or Wifi service. [Read more...]
Just in time for Independence Day, one of the first European maps to recognize the continental mass known today as North and South America was discovered tucked between the pages of an old geometry book in the Munich University Library. The map, which is over 500 years old, was created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller using data from Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages to “The New World” from 1501-1502, hence the designation “America”. Until now, the map had been lost sometime in the 19th century after being misfiled in the university library. Including this one, there are only 5 versions of the map that are known to exist and one of them sold for $1 million at an auction in 2005. [Read more...]
