Illustrated by Michael Karpovage of mapformation

Recently we teamed up once again with mapformation to create a unique illustrated map of The Biltmore Estate located in Asheville, NC.  This popular tourist attraction was once the home of the Vanderbilts and is the largest private residence in the United States.  We were asked to create 3 maps of the estate to be used on their website: a 2D overview map, and 3D oblique views of two specific areas of the estate.  Michael Karpovage did the 3D illustrations while we did the overall art direction, 2D map, and development of the interactive site.

You can see larger versions of the maps in our portfolio, and visit The Biltmore website to see the final interactive map we built for them.

The Cartography Design Annual is a collection of maps from some of the top cartographers in the world capturing the beauty of mapping. Compiled and edited by Nick Springer, the Cartography Design Annual collects a select group of maps published in the calendar year 2008. The maps cover a broad spectrum of cartographic styles: 3D birds-eye views, travel maps, historic-style maps, mountain maps, and many more. The Annual is published by Springer Cartographics LLC, with support from NACIS (the North American Cartographic Information Society). The book, in beautiful full-color with an overview and detail view of each map, is both a showcase for cartographers and a interesting collection for anyone who loves maps.

The first Cartography Design Annual was received with great praise and excitement from the cartographic community and so the series continues with this second edition. With a foreword by Tom Patterson of the U.S. National Park Service in the second edition, the release Cartography Design Annual series is becoming an anticipated event for cartographers.

The book contains 30 maps from cartographers in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Poland. This is book #2 in what will be an annual series.

The editor, Nick Springer is also the founder of Cartotalk.com, the most popular online community for cartographers worldwide. “The first edition of the Cartography Design Annual was a bit of an experiment, but all of the great feedback I received form cartographers proved that there is a need for this kind of showcase.” said Mr. Springer. “I hope this year’s edition will gain even broader exposure outside the world of cartographers.”

Mr. Springer is the Founder and President of Springer Cartographics LLC in Crosswicks, NJ and has worked for Microsoft Corporation as a Product Designer creating mapping applications and also designs software for GPS navigation systems. He studied Geography and Cartography at Syracuse University.

We are extremely happy about yesterday’s launch of the new Natural Earth data set.  Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales.  The site is now fully available for downloading of all data.

The idea was to create tightly integrated vector and raster data, to make it much easier to make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.  Started by Nathaniel Kelso of the Washington Post, and Tom Patterson of the U.S. National Park Service Natural Earth is a NACIS and MapGiving co-branded product with assistance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison cartography lab, Florida State University, and others including Springer Cartographics (we designed the logo and did the design and development of the website).

One of the goals of Natural Earth is to help solve a major problem in cartography: finding suitable data for making small-scale maps. The web is awash in geospatial data, and cartographers are forced to waste time sifting through confusing tangles of poorly attributed data to make clean, legible maps.  The carefully generalized linework maintains consistent, recognizable geographic shapes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Natural Earth was built from the ground up so you will find that all data layers align precisely with one another. For example, where rivers and country borders are one and the same, the lines are coincident.

I used a pre-release version of the data for the map in Sarah Palin’s book and it made the data gathering and editing process so much easier.  It was only about 30 minutes from download to GIS compilation to Illustrator export, rather than the usual hours of work.

Another goal is to include many features missing from people’s mental map of the world in the hope of improving overall geographic literacy.

The terms of use for Natural Earth are wide open: All versions of Natural Earth raster + vector map data found on this website are in the public domain. You may use the maps in any manner, including modifying the content and design, electronic dissemination, and offset printing.

A few places on the map are fictional locations, which had to be located based on the manuscript.  Without the assistance of Mr. Crichton it took some time to piece together the travel of the characters to figure out where he intended these fictional places to be located.

You can see a larger image in the portfolio.

The book publishing schedule was moved up from the spring of 2010 to November 17th, 2009 so we only had a few days to pull this map together.  We  used a polar equidistant azimuthal map projection centered on the North Pole to show Alaska’s position in the world.

You can see the full map in our portfolio.