Tag Archives: nostalgia

Maps! I love maps. Especially old ones, or ones that are a little bit different. But mostly I like maps because a lot of the time they kind of represent something a bit mysterious. You’ve got this detailed plan of an area that you might be visiting…and a map can provide so much information if it’s been designed well. But really, you’re not going to have a proper idea of what the location’s going to be like until you’re actually there. Here are some of my favourite cartographical finds…

Dorothy‘s song map uses titles and lyrics to make up a fictional landscape of pop and rock history. Recently, they have also built a film map on this same idea as well.

This bold, colourful, hand-drawn map of London was done by Jenni Sparks and is available to buy as a print.

David Ryan Robinson‘s hand drawn map of London started out as a project to hand draw a map of the whole of the UK. I hope he continues this, I’d love to see it progress and grow, especially as it’s not often you have the privilege of experiencing an artist’s work in progress.

This piece by Claire Brewster is typical of her style of work, and I love all of it. She combines the informative design of maps with the intricate craft of paper cutting – two of my favourite things, and a combination which I haven’t seen anyone else do as well as she does. If I had a spare £3,000 languishing in my bank account, then I’d buy one of her artworks in an instant.

Matthew Cusick uses fragments of maps in his painstakingly intricate collages. The first one of roads is kind of meta, but the second one of a woman is fascinating, as it shows how many different shades and tones can be found in something as uniform and distinctive as a map. The blank areas outlined in blue make me think of a half finished painting by numbers, there’s something really charming about that. I think it’s maybe because it reminds me of my aunty – when I was a little kid, she was in her teens, and she used to always do these painting by numbers. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

This map of the USA, by Design Turnpike, has been put together using salvaged number plates. Each state has been cut out of a number plate which corresponds to that state. It’s pretty appropriate considering that there are so many places in America where it’s absolutely necessary to have a car to get anywhere. I didn’t grow up in America, but when I was a kid I used to live in a village where the bus into town came about twice a week. I’m not even lying.