I’m attempting to combine my love for
cartography and illustration to produce
original art that’s both useful as a map but
also beautiful enough to frame and hang on a
wall. The piece I’ve submitted for this article
is a bespoke map for a wedding and reception,
showing the guests how to get from one
location to the other.
So much of how we define ourselves is
centred on our sense of place. Our strongest
memories are generally anchored to a scene.
Chances are you can imagine yourself looking
down on any area in which you’ve been truly
alive. A special holiday, or a place where you
spent your childhood.
I’m trying to attach that personal sense
of place to a cartographic product; creating
artwork that not only tells you how the paths
and roads knot together, but also conveys the
essence of what makes a place special.
All cartographers are dreamers. Every hand
drawn map since the very first smudges on
cave walls was an attempt to portray what
saw when they imagined themselves as a bird,
looking down at the world beneath them. A
map is a shared dream, in which the person
using it takes the same flight, pretending, for a
moment that the piece of paper in their hands
is the earth on which they walk.
Even the strictest drawing office tutor
will tell you that a map is a cartographer’s
“personal interpretation of the terrain”. This
is the gap between art and science in which
cartographers move.
“
This is the gap
between art and
science in which
cartographers
move