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Typographic World Map

Typographic World Map

The Hand Drawn Map Association

I don’t know how many of you know about my obsession with maps. It started with West Wing, it was fuelled by Paper Towns and it peaked with the English seminar I took this semester about maps and identity. Maps tell us so much about the people who drew them, how they saw themselves, how they saw other people, how they saw themselves in relation to other people. The 2D representation of a 3D (and 4D? I don’t know how these things work) planet is always going to be a lie. But just because it doesn’t present perfectly what is actually there doesn’t mean it doesn’t tell us different interesting things about the planet as someone else sees it. And that’s all we have, really, isn’t it? Snippets of how other people see things? How other people negotiate their day to day life in relation to one another and in relation to the physical land around them and in relation to the ideas circulating in their societies and everyone else’s societies?

I like maps. This is my new favourite website.
fishingboatproceeds: I was kind of hoping that my fascination with cartography would end when I finished writing Paper Towns, but instead it has become worse. Part of what interests me about maps is how many choices are involved in portraying the world: You have to decide which direction (if any) will be up, how you’ll distort the world to render it in two dimensions, and you have to decide where the middle is. (Most of our maps have Alaska on one side and Russia on the other, but why?) In some ways, mapmaking is quite a bit like writing stories, I guess. Here’s a map that places Mecca at the center of the world. (Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the site of many important events in early Islamic history; Muslims turn toward Mecca when they pray, and this map was created to show you which way to turn.) You could make a similar map radiating out from Jerusalem, or New York City, or your hometown, or whatever feels like the center of the world to you. And that map would become for you the only truly accurate one. This makes me ask myself which place is at the center of my world—what’s the starting point from which the planet spins out in all directions? (I can’t answer this question for myself, at least not at the moment; I just think it’s interesting.) 

fishingboatproceeds:

I was kind of hoping that my fascination with cartography would end when I finished writing Paper Towns, but instead it has become worse. Part of what interests me about maps is how many choices are involved in portraying the world: You have to decide which direction (if any) will be up, how you’ll distort the world to render it in two dimensions, and you have to decide where the middle is. (Most of our maps have Alaska on one side and Russia on the other, but why?) In some ways, mapmaking is quite a bit like writing stories, I guess.

Here’s a map that places Mecca at the center of the world. (Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the site of many important events in early Islamic history; Muslims turn toward Mecca when they pray, and this map was created to show you which way to turn.)

You could make a similar map radiating out from Jerusalem, or New York City, or your hometown, or whatever feels like the center of the world to you. And that map would become for you the only truly accurate one. This makes me ask myself which place is at the center of my world—what’s the starting point from which the planet spins out in all directions?

(I can’t answer this question for myself, at least not at the moment; I just think it’s interesting.) 

Rufus Blanchard, 1890, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 

Rufus Blanchard, 1890, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 

fishingboatproceeds: Anyone who has read Paper Towns knows that I’m interested in cartography, and how our maps reflect the way we imagine the world. I also really like fictional cartography: maps of places that don’t exist, mashups of satellite photographs that create nonexistent geographies, and the artwork of the Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca, who uses maps “to get lost, not to get oriented.” God I miss seminars. Anywhere where you can talk about maps for two hours straight and no one laughs at you… worth gold. Is summer over yet? #unpopular questions

fishingboatproceeds:

Anyone who has read Paper Towns knows that I’m interested in cartography, and how our maps reflect the way we imagine the world. I also really like fictional cartography: maps of places that don’t exist, mashups of satellite photographs that create nonexistent geographies, and the artwork of the Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca, who uses maps “to get lost, not to get oriented.”

God I miss seminars. Anywhere where you can talk about maps for two hours straight and no one laughs at you… worth gold. Is summer over yet? #unpopular questions

badesaba: world map - albiruni Al Biruni [lived between 973 CE and 1048 CE] contributed to cartography, astronomy, mathematics, physics, medicine and history.  TIL there’s a fuckyeahcartography. Not to lower the tone but FUCK YEAH.

badesaba:

world map - albiruni

Al Biruni [lived between 973 CE and 1048 CE] contributed to cartography, astronomy, mathematics, physics, medicine and history. 

TIL there’s a fuckyeahcartography. Not to lower the tone but FUCK YEAH.

(via fuckyeahcartography)

incessantdiscourse: Cut-Out Street Maps by Karen M. O’Leary. The three maps below are cut-outs of Berlin, Vancouver & San Francisco. Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into each piece, you’ll find her works listed on Etsy for just over $1000. Oh god, so beautiful.

incessantdiscourse:

Cut-Out Street Maps by Karen M. O’Leary. The three maps below are cut-outs of Berlin, Vancouver & San Francisco. Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into each piece, you’ll find her works listed on Etsy for just over $1000.

Oh god, so beautiful.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

bitteroldpunk: A nineteenth-century result of biblical literalism: the Bible tells us the Earth is square! More info. Via MetaFilter

bitteroldpunk:

A nineteenth-century result of biblical literalism: the Bible tells us the Earth is square!

More info.

Via MetaFilter

(via fuckyeahcartography)

(via cartophile)

(via fuckyeahcartography)

(via asthesurfacebreaks)

archimaps: map of the old city of Herat, Afghanistan

archimaps: map of the old city of Herat, Afghanistan

sandmarg: 1940s Aerial View of New York City

sandmarg: 1940s Aerial View of New York City

(via fuckyeahcartography)

“

It has always been this way with the mapmakers: from their first scratches on the cave wall to show the migration patterns of the herds, they have traced lines and lived inside them.

Maya Sonenberg

(via fuckyeahcartography)

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