MAPS MAPMAKING
HAND-DRAWN & VECTOR CARTOGRAPHY

I tend to enjoy making maps.

Mapmaking sits in one of my favorite places between design and illustration. A map has a job to do: orient, clarify, explain. But it can also tell you something about a place: what matters there, what it feels like to move through it, and sometimes what has disappeared.

Most of the maps shown are of real places, but sometimes I get to illustrate fictional maps for books as well. In both cases, I love the editing involved. What belongs? What doesn’t? What needs to be exact, and what can be exaggerated, simplified, or drawn with a little personality? The task determines the answer. I’m equally happy building a precise vector map when accuracy is paramount or drawing one by hand when character, memory, and experience matter just as much as distance and direction.

The research may be half the fun. I can happily disappear into old street maps, aerial photographs, property lines, forgotten roads, railroad tracks, buildings, USGS topography archives, and somebody’s recollection of what used to stand just beyond the creek.

I’ve always been especially drawn to maps that predate aerial photography (especially medieval ones), when describing a place required observation, measurement, memory, interpretation, and drawing. Every map is an act of deciding how a place should be understood.

And if a project needs a map, I’m usually very happy to be the one making it.

PROJECT CREDITS

Map research, illustration, design, and lettering: Paul Soupiset
Map data (various): Public Domain, USGS, and OpenStreetMap.org