The Map Room

Via @awoodruff, Yuri Alexander’s typographic map of Tacoma, Washington — “a personal design project of mine to hide a 48in×30in piece of bare wall in my living room” — which he’s selling as a rather large print.

Links to typographic maps of one sort or another — and it turns out that there is more than one sort — continue to come out of the woodwork, in numbers sufficient to warrant their own category. The latest comes from Janne Aukia, who writes with links to two word maps of the world he made a couple of years ago. Each is a map of the world made up of phrases describing cities, with colours and font sizes matching population size. One is “a map with Google search matches that are of the format ‘is * for its,’ such as ‘Helsinki is * for its’” (above); the other is of adjectives describing cities on Wikitravel. Janne describes the maps on his blog, here and here (in Finnish, but Google Translate isn’t bad).

The typographic maps keep coming. Andy Proehl writes to share a link to a set of typographic maps he’s been working on in his off hours. “I have a bunch more in mind and am working towards a complete series,” he says. At right: maps of the Mississippi and Nile rivers.

Previously: Typographic Maps and Map Typography; Typographic Map of London Surnames; Typographic Map of U.S. Surnames; More Typographic Maps; Typographic Maps of Boston and Chicago.

On the Making Maps blog, John Krygier adds to the increasing volume of posts on typographic maps, but also has a few things to say about map typography — i.e., how text is used on maps — including some excerpts from the forthcoming second edition of Making Maps (see previous entry).

I mentioned Stephen Walter’s detailed hand-drawn typographic maps of Liverpool (and London — which made the Magnificent Maps exhibit) all too briefly in this entry. Fortunately, the Guardian had a profile of him this week: apparently Berlin is his next project.

Following hot on the heels of the typographic map of U.S. surnames that he worked on for National Geographic, James Cheshire has announced an interactive typographic map of London surnames. A slider allows you to select between the most,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Now we know why James Cheshire of Spatial Analysis did a roundup of typographic maps earlier this week (see previous entry): he worked on a typographic map of U.S. surnames that appears in the February 2011 issue of National…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Spatial Analysis’s roundup of typographical maps — that is, maps made entirely of textual elements — includes Axis Maps’s typographic map of San Francisco (above) and Stephen Walter’s incredible hand-drawn map of Liverpool. Via @worldmapper. Previously: Typographic Maps of…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Andy Woodruff announces a new project from Axis Maps: typographic maps — “that is, maps made entirely of typography.” Map features are rendered in repeating lines of type (see example above). Nearly every line of text in these maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.