Category: Art

Two Books Map London

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book covers for The Boroughs of London by Mike Hall and Matt Brown (Batsford, October 2025) and Modern London Maps by Vincent Westbrook (Batsford, May 2025).
Batsford

Two books out this year, both from Batsford, explore London through maps. Vincent Westbrook’s Modern London Maps focuses on more than 60 maps from the 20th century. Like many books of this kind, Modern London Maps draws primarily from a single source: the London Archives. Mapping London reviewed it last month: “probably quite close to the book that we would have published.” And out next month, The Boroughs of London collects Mike Hall’s “boldly coloured, highly detailed maps of every London borough, inspired by classic 1960s graphic design,” pairing it with commentary by Matt Brown.

Related: Map Books of 2025.

How xkcd Does Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Randall Munroe, author of the xkcd web comic, posts a surprising amount of map-related content, which I invariably end up linking to here. With some exceptions, they fall into one of two categories, each of which has a recent example.

The first category is a hand-drawn infographic map showing, in earnest, some interesting or surprising information. See, for example, this map showing the most observed animal or plant in each U.S. state:

Randall Munroe, “iNaturalist Animals and Plants,” xkcd, 21 Jul 2025.

Other maps of this ilk include drainage basins, lesser-known towns sharing a famous place name, least informative Google Trends maps, and maps of the 2016, 2018 (challengers) and 2020 elections.

The second category is where Randall chooses the path of violence, with maps clearly designed by Black Hat Guy to hurt our brains. These include a series of maps that mangle U.S. state borders (1, 2, 3). But the most insidious are his Bad Maps Projections series, the most recent of which projects continents onto their own globes:

Randall Munroe, “Bad Map Projection: Interrupted Spheres,” xkcd, 30 Jul 2025.

Thing is, this one isn’t as brain-curdling, because similar globes—globes that depict a portion of the world on an entire sphere—exist in the real world.

Re-Purposing Maps: The Art of Mark M. Garrett

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Mark M. Garrett’s Unterwalden (2020), a colourful example of re-purposed map art.
Mark M. Garrett, “Unterwalden,” 2020.

Responding to my post about Joanathan Bessaci’s map cutout art, Fred DeJarlais wrote to point out that the California Map Society’s journal, Calafia, featured another artist using a similar technique, Mark M. Garrett, in its Fall 2022 issue. It’s a good piece in which Garrett goes into detail about his inspiration and method, but since Calafia’s archives are member-only, I’ll point you to Garrett’s website, which is full of examples of his work, and where he explains his work thusly:

At some point I began to fold paper and ‘draw’ with scissors . . . particularly re-purposing maps or anatomy texts culled from flea markets or estate sales. I often incorporate opaque and transparent watercolor as an extension of the color palette printed on the charts. I find comfort in the creative and obssesive nature of these collages as each reveals a unique process and persona over time. New worlds emerge in oddly emotional interpretations of once familiar places. There’s an anticipation as they shift and evolve from factually printed documents to new and potentially uncertain places of possibility. The technique of hand-cutting maps and painting in the gaps emerged for me as a metaphor of holding the world even as its outlines shift radically and unpredictably.

The World Turned Upside Down and Other Globes: A Roundup

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe sculpture by Mark Wallinger, on the campus of the London School of Economics, surrounded by a few passersby with cameras. The globe shows political borders; the South Pole is at the top. Photo by Geoff Henson, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Geoff Henson (Flickr). Creative Commons BY-ND licence.

Mark Wallinger’s World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe on the LSE campus with the South Pole on top, generated controversy (and vandalism) after its unveiling in 2019 for how it handled contested borders: it shows Lhasa as a capital, Taiwan as a separate country, and omitted Palestine. I mean, it’s on a university campus: controversy about such things was inevitable. Via Mappery; more at Atlas Obscura and Brilliant Maps.

Mappery also points to a 19th-century globular clock that shows the sun’s position at noon on the globe, which I find awfully intriguing, which is to say I want one.

The Library of Congress is changing how it stores its rare globes, replacing acrylic vitrines (heavy, bulky, and potentially off-gassing compounds that put the globes at risk) with archival cardboard cases, which are less sexy but more practical—we’re talking about storage, not display. I’m actually surprised that rare globes had essentially been stored in display cases.

The Map Cutout Art of Joanathan Bessaci

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Joanathan Bessaci, “Waiting.” A collage of map cutouts that form a portrait of a face in negative space.
Joanathan Bessaci, “Waiting”. Galerie Jamault.

The art of Joanathan Bessaci includes maps cut out and layered to form images.

I presently work with old Michelin maps dated from roughly 1920 to 1970. I use old French Michelin maps because I like their color and texture but also because for me, they symbolize the roads that various family members have taken to get to France. My maternal grandmother emigrated to France from Vietnam and my paternal grandfather emigrated to France from Kabylia (Northern Algeria). I myself moved to Washington D.C. from Paris in August, 2016.

I was also drawn to old French Michelin maps because I have been surrounded by objects like them since I was a child. Both my father and grandfather have stands in Lyon’s largest flea market and I spent long hours there as a child and adolescent. Many of the maps that I use come from Lyon’s flea markets and others throughout France. 

My work presently consists of cutting portraits and other images into several maps. I chose my maps very carefully and try to integrate their geography, including lakes, rivers, oceans, roads, highways, parks and city centers into my images to highlight certain visual elements. Each of my pieces is made up of multiple maps which I cut out and layer on top of each other in between pieces of glass to create depth and texture.

It’s astonishingly well done. Bessaci’s maps often form images of animals, or people in motion; motorways intersect at locations on the body that evoke a circulatory system. The effect is even more dramatic in his anatomical works, where the map layers draw out hidden bones.

Here’s a time-lapse video of Bessaci creating one of his works:

An exhibition of Bessaci’s work, Mapping the Soul, wrapped up last week at the Zenith Gallery in Washington, D.C. It can also be seen at Galerie Jamault in Paris.

Maps on Vinyl in the Guardian

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Damien Saunder’s book about maps on record covers, Maps on Vinyl, got a writeup in the Guardian last week.

Front and rear oblique views of the cover of Damien Saunder’s book Maps on Vinyl.

Some designs address global social or environmental issues. Others map the mind, imaginary places, feelings, worldviews—or, in the case of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s The Equatorial Stars, deep space.

Among Saunder’s personal favourites is a sleeve from the long-gone Iowa alt rock band House of Large Sizes, showing a cake whose icing is decorated with a map, with a chunk missing. “It’s a commentary on how we’re consuming the world piece by piece, almost without noticing,” says Saunder.

Another favourite cover comes from Belgian punk band Hetze: an illustration of a globe dangling by a thread from the forefinger of an elegant, long-nailed hand, by tattoo artist Florence Roman.

Previously: Maps on Vinyl.

Fuller Goes to Washington

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A crop from Gareth Fuller’s pen-and-ink pictorial map of Washington, D.C., published as The DMV in 2025.
Detail from Gareth Fuller, “The DMV” (2025). Pen and ink on cotton board, 120 × 120 cm.

Gareth Fuller’s latest creation is “The DMV,” a pictorial map of Washington, D.C., and the neighbouring bits of Maryland and Virginia (hence “DMV”).

Created over twelve months, including three months of on-the-ground exploration in 2023 and creation in 2024, this artwork becomes the fourth capital city within the ongoing series, Purposeful Wanderings. The third time capturing an entire region on canvas. And the very first artwork depicting the United States of America.
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From its very beginning, Washington, D.C. has sat at the centre of American national identity, politics, conflict, compromise, and power. But it doesn’t work alone: it’s the wider region that sustains the Capital. The DMV—D.C., Maryland, and Virginia—isn’t just a geographic label; it’s a cultural badge, a collective effort shaped by the reach of the Metro, the sprawl of the Beltway, and the unique, fluid neighbourhoods that define its borders. These observations have guided my exploration; the drawings seek to uncover what binds The DMV together and creates its unshakable sense of place.

As with Fuller’s previous works, prints are available at several price points.

I missed the previous installment of Fuller’s Purposeful Wanderings series, “Shanghai,” which came out in 2022.

Maps on Vinyl

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Front and back cover of Maps on Vinyl.

Maps on Vinyl: An Atlas of Album Cover Maps collects some 415 examples of record albums with maps on the cover. “The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book.” Self-published in Australia, it’s being distributed in the United States via The Map Center.

Related: Map Books of 2025.

The Osher Map Library’s 2025 Illustrated Mapmaking Contest for Maine Elementary Students

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Osher Map Library’s illustrated mapmaking contest for elementary school students has been a thing since 2016. For the 2025 contest, some 350 entries from Maine fourth, fifth and sixth graders were received. They’ve been narrowed down to twelve finalists; the winners, who get prizes, will be determined by public vote—which ends tomorrow, so go have a look.

Map of the Month Club Launches

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A series of thumbnails showing various map products available from the Map of the Month Club. Nicked from Daniel Huffman’s page.
Daniel Huffman

On behalf of the Independent Map Artists (previously), Daniel Huffman is launching an experiment: a map of the month club.

For a one-time subscription fee of $200, folks can get new mappy goods sent to them each month for five months (so, $40 per month). People can explore items from multiple artists, and I hope it will help bring new attention to my colleagues—support that these individual mappers might not otherwise get if they were not part of a group. Picking out individual interesting maps can be hard, so we’re making it easy for people to receive an assortment.

That fee includes shipping. The product page lists some of what the subscription is likely to include. It’s a one-time deal, a single five-month package, for now, but may continue if it proves successful. Signups close on June 15.

A Hand-drawn Map of the British Isles

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Mark Esper

Mark Esper spent one and a half years drawing a map of Great Britain, Ireland and the dependencies (Isle of Man, Channel Islands). He describes how he did it in this blog post. “In its finished form, this map contains over 280 cities, as well as a countless number of castles, ruins, and other buildings scattered over the map.  All 21 National Parks are labeled, 12 different languages are present: English, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, French, Auregnais, Serquiais, Cornish, Manx, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic, and all major bodies of water are labeled.” He’s selling it as a 24×36-inch print. “In the future, I plan on continuing to draw countries, states, continents and other regions of the world in a similar level of detail.”

Paranneaux Globes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
An image from the Paranneaux Globes website, showing a selection of small sculpted globes on metal stands.
Paranneaux Globes

For the past decade, Reynold Mackey of Paranneaux Globes has been sculpting physiographic globes from materials like wood and bronze. There’s not a whole lot of information on his website, a bit more on the Instagram account, but a lot of detail about his methods emerges in his conversation with Evan Applegate on the Very Expensive Maps podcast (episode link: Apple Podcasts, Spotify).

Reimagining Rural Cartographies

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Reimagining Rural Cartographies is a series from independent rural news outlet Barn Raiser that “features written and photo essays that create or examine nontraditional and living maps of the Midwest. How does the path a cougar took to roam into the heart of Chicago help us understand how urban, suburban and rural landscapes are changing? What really happens in the forest at the center of a recent Landback movement? How does the USPS serve as a rural lifeline, connecting neighbors and faraway places, despite service cuts?” Three articles so far.

Independent Map Sellers

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Lots of little companies and individuals making and selling maps; the Independent Map Sellers page lists a bunch of them in one handy place. “Interested in buying something special for the map enthusiasts in your life (or yourself)? Skip the giant companies and go straight to the source: there are loads of skilled, independent cartographers out there whose work you can buy!” [Daniel Huffman]