The Well-Dressed Map Marker

Everyone knows the iconic Google map marker. Looking like a hot air balloon in flight, this marker has landed squarely in the middle of our visual culture.

Many maps use similar-looking markers. While you can find lots of alternative marker shapes and designs online, why not be a little different and let Adobe Illustrator transform your markers into eye-popping icons? Placing your icons under the creative control of the Appearance panel gives you a myriad of visually sophisticated options.

custom map marker illustration
Continue reading

Posted in Graphics, Maps | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Painting a Personal Cartography

Simonetta Moro (simonettamoro.com), an Italian-born artist now living in New York City, explores the meaning of places she loves and lives through cartography. Approaching maps not as a reader but as a maker, Moro layers the signs and symbols of city nuances in pencil, paint, ink, and pastels.

From the vocabulary of soft pastels and hard-edged colored pencils, Moro traces an autobiographical journey through an intimate geography of the places that hold significance in her life.

detail from Simonetta Moro's Map of my Life painting

Map of My Life (detail)

Continue reading

Posted in Design, Maps | Comments Off

The Map that Flu

Often a map’s last word is spoken at its printing. For artist Sam Hundley (http://samhundley.com), printing is just the beginning.

Hundley, a Virginia artist, enjoys working with mixed media. Starting with this 1996 edition of a National Geographic landform map, Hundley mixed ink and colored pencil to turn a staid map into a capricious editorial illustration.

mixed media U.S. map

Continue reading

Posted in Design, Maps | Tagged , | Comments Off

Call Out Your Custom Map Type

To call attention to type labels on your map, consider placing them in a box. Not just any box will do; place labels in boxes painted with Adobe Illustrator’s visual effects to help them stand out, or above, other details on the map.

For this economic development map, we created a call-out box graphic style that automatically sized itself to the height and width of each text label.

custom map type for economic development

Continue reading

Posted in Maps, Tutorial | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Antiquing Type on a Custom Map

If you want a hand-rendered or antique look for a custom map title, you can search for one of the many fonts available with a distressed appearance. Or, you can distress regular fonts using Adobe Illustrator’s Appearance panel, Effects, and Opacity Mask. It’s fun and the experiments you create might move your creation in an unexpected—but delightful—direction.

Mapmaker Steve Gordon applied the Roughen and Scribble effects, and the Opacity Mask, to chip away at the edges of letters for this title graphic.

antiquing type
Continue reading

Posted in Graphics, Tutorial | Comments Off

Softening a Custom Map

A simple location map may have a job to perform that’s anything but simple.

It has to attract readers and convey important information clearly. It also has to play nice with the style of the publication in which it appears.

custom map of Manhattan Beach, California
Continue reading

Posted in Maps, Tutorial | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Your Life as a Transit Map

Everything public is mapped.

Every public place we visit, or can visit, appears on a map. In our hands we hold the latest streets, curbside views, and, now, interiors of prominent buildings. We’re convinced that everything worth seeing can be seen on a map. Or should be.

The Obamas mapuccino by Rajiv Ramaiah
Continue reading

Posted in Maps | Tagged , | Comments Off

Google Goes Mogul

Imagine standing by the water cooler with a few co-workers at the world’s premier online map provider. Contemplating weekend plans, you suggest a meet-up on the slopes. Then someone suggests, wistfully, “I wish we could preview the ski runs with our maps and street views.”

Frown turns into smile a year later because accompanying you on your next trip is a smartphone trail map complete with street-style views of the major ski runs. Working for Google has its perks!

printed map of Deer Valley Ski Resort
Continue reading

Posted in Maps | Tagged , | 1 Comment

When New Data Meet Old Maps

Updating an old map with new data is a familiar task facing cartographers. That task is simple when you use Avenza MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator and when the existing map is already georeferenced.

But when you are handed a map whose georeferencing has been corrupted or removed, the task becomes a little more complicated. Fortunately, MAPublisher provides the tools needed to georeference any map, enabling you to import data that precisely fits existing map artwork.

custom map of Frisco, Texas
Continue reading

Posted in Tutorial | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

The Bamboo Topo Map

When wood meets iPhone, the occasion can be anything but pleasant.

But wrap that iPhone in the natural beauty and protection of a custom-fitted bamboo case and you’ll find the symbiosis of wood, aluminum and glass display very pleasant to hold and behold.

custom topo map carved in bamboo
Continue reading

Posted in Maps | Tagged | Comments Off

Kinky Map Types

Excerpted from The Adobe Illustrator CS5 WOW! Book by Sharon Steuer. Copyright © 2011. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.

To label curving features like rivers and roads on custom maps, cartographer Steve Gordon relies on setting type on a path using Adobe Illustrator. But kinks in the paths of geographic features mean spending a lot of time smoothing type paths. Gordon uses several strategies to get the kinks out of map labels.

custom map type
Continue reading

Posted in Maps | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

The Map as Flyover Country

Window seats are harder to get, thanks to the iPad.

Delta Airlines’ new Fly Delta for iPad app provides travelers with an in-flight interactive map of the world below as the plane traverses the sky to its destination.

The app features an option called the Glass Bottom Jet. Use it to view your plane’s position over a map, in real-time, along with markers for points-of-interest like famous landmarks, photos, and the “social content” of your friends.

Now you can spot Mount Rushmore and spy your friend’s secret, solar-powered cabin in the Black Hills. (So that’s where she’s been tweeting!)


Continue reading

Posted in Maps | Tagged , , , | Comments Off