Caught Mapping

Caught Mapping - 1940

This Jam Handy film teaches us how road maps are drawn, field-checked and printed.



Part of the Prelinger Archives, this film is also available from Archive.com when its working...


Thanks to Laura for the link

Tennessee Representa

From MiBlox shoes:

This is the shoe that might make Boost Mobile change their pitch, no longer will people wonder "where you at" or for that matter where you're from. Not only does the Tennessee Representa perfectly coordinate with your favorite jersey with its colors of orange white and grey, it also helps you proudly rep your roots with a detailed TN map including cities like Chattanooga, Memphis, Knoxville, Nashville and beyond!

I know I've always looked for shoes that will answer the question, "Where you at?"

According to the company's site, a portion of every shoe sold will be donated to charitable organizations supporting programs for urban youth.

Also available in Georgia...


Thanks to Keich for the tip

ericsson map

Another old example of body maps in advertising:



"old" because I saved this ad in 1999.

"old".... because, well just look at the clunky old cell phone...

North America Wired

Wire sculpture by Elizabeth Berrien

The artist, "often felt that the intricate, organic lines of our living planet and its features - continents, great river and mountain ranges would make a glorious translation into wire."

Indeed it does.


Via Her Majesty of Maps

A Primer of GIS

I received a review copy of A Primer of GIS: Fundamental Geographic and Cartographic Concepts by Francis Harvey.

To paraphrase Dr. McCoy, "I'm a Librarian! Not a Geographer." So, I'll make the same offer I made with Managing Geographic Information Systems, if you would like to have my copy of this book, I will happily send it to you, if you will promise to write a brief review that I will then post here. Deal?


UPDATE 5/1: I have a reviewer... watch this space...

Appalachia for Hillary

In his article, Pennsylvania Confirms Hillary’s Appalachian Prowess, The Electoral Map blogger, Patrick Ottenhoff, illustrates the popularity of Hillary Clinton throughout the Appalachian region of the United States:



Ottenhoff concludes:

North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky have yet to vote, but if the electoral maps of the rest of Appalachia are any indication, Hillary can expect huge wins in the Appalachian pockets of these states.

Read the full article for more analysis and electoral maps.

Appalachia, as it is defined in the map above, is one part of the larger electoral region of "Cumberland", as defined by Beyond Red & Blue. Are these not the "blue-collar Reagan Democrat" voters that the Democratic candidate will need to win the White House?

In a conversation, after the Pennsylvania Primary results were known, an Obama supporter said to me (in jest) that those "inbred hicks" were responsible for Clinton's win. Yet, isn't that the sort of "elitist" attitude that brought on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama's "bitter" comments? This is an area of concern that Obama and his campaign must address if they hope to prevail in November (not just a couple weeks from now in North Carolina and Indiana).

Cartophilia will not become a politics blog, but political maps often catch my eye when they contain telling information. Feel free to comment below and tell me how I'm full of it...

Pennsylvania: Land of Cheesesteaks, Chocolate and Ketchup!

The Pennsylvania Presidential Primary is tomorrow. The latest in this neverending campaign. Will it the be the last hurrah for Hillary Clinton or the beginning of the end for Barack Obama?

I have no idea, but here are some fine Pennsylvania map postcards from my collection.



If you are interested in election maps and analysis, then check out The Electoral Map's Pennsylvania Primer, Part I



Pennsylvania... home of the Philly Cheesesteak, Hershey's Chocolate and Heinz Ketchup.

Strike up the music the band has begun
The Pennsylvania Polka
Pick out your partner and join in the fun
The Pennsylvania Polka
It started in Scranton. It's now number one
It's bound to entertain ya
Everybody has a mania to do the polka from Pennsylvania

As I type this, the Philadelphia Soul are leading the Columbus Destroyers on Monday Night Arena Football on ESPN. Have I mentioned I am a fan of Arena Football?



Lancaster County, Pennsylvania... the Pensylvania Dutch Amusement Park.

Why Guys Won't Ask For Directions

From PostSecret.com, the repository of secrets on postcards.

Say Yes! to Italy

The other day, I wrote about Michigan, "the most anthropomorphic" state. If you know anyone from Michigan, you have probably experienced the phenomenon wherein the Michiganian points to a spot on his palm and says, "I was born here, in Pontiac," or "my family has a summer cottage here, in the thumb."

The most anthropomorphic nation is, of course, Italy. So, do Italians, when describing a location in their home country, point to their leg?



Made in Italy By ivanas
for the Worth1000.com "Nationalism 6" contest.

Additional clever photoshoped maps from Worth1000.com:

Cheesy Texas

Is it a miracle? The State of Texas has appeared on this little girl's grilled cheese sandwich!

No, it is The 1st 6th Annual National Grilled Cheese Invitational!

"A Grilled Cheese Sammich cooking competition. You cook. The Audience decides. Everybody wins!"

Cheese is good.



Via Boing Boing.

Brenda Jones at Rosewood

Thanks to Ms. Cartophiliac for dragging me out to the Rosewood Gallery in Kettering, Ohio, near Dayton. The current exhibit includes the fiber art work of Brenda Jones... with maps! Hurry if you want to see. It is only here until April 25.

From the Kettering-Oakwood Times:

Brenda Jones, of Cheney, KS, received her MA in painting and photography from the Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. She is currently teaching art at Wichita East High School and at Friends University in Wichita. Jones has received the Fullbright Award to teach and study in Argentina and the Japan Fullbright Memorial Fund to study the role of the kimono in Japan. The clothing articles are primarily aprons and jackets, which are reminiscent of women, remembered, imagined and known.

With each hand-sewn piece, she addresses women’s issues and feels more connected to her grandmother, who was an alterations lady for a major department store. The works are bigger than life sized and created mainly from paper, but include more unique materials such as tea bags, chopsticks, wax, seaweed, used coffee filters and used drier sheets.

... and maps!

I wrote to Brenda for more information, and she sent a photo of this piece, Willa's Milky Way, "Which is made almost entirely of maps... Nebraska/Colorado. It's really about Willa Cather (one of my favorite authors) and the traditional quilt block pattern "Milky Way"."



"Actually, I use maps in the work often to signify a geographic place where I was when those thoughts were going through my head. Also, I sometimes use them because they really give a place to the person I was thinking of. Or, sometimes it is simply because they symbolize some time of journey to me and most of the works do have something to do with a journey of some sort or another...whether it is mental or geographic."



Some samples of her work can be seen here on the Rosewood site, and additional work can be seen at her online gallery at ArtCloud.com.

Thank you, Brenda. Your work is a treat!

Do you want cement shoes with that?

Illustration in Salon.com today:

Criminals of the world, unite and take over, by Laura Miller

The article reviews McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny, which provides "a startling tour of the new international underworld, documenting the hidden costs of an unregulated global free market."

Bullet holes the world over are the result.

Say Yes! to Michigan

The most anthropomorphic of the United States is Michigan, with its lower peninsula shaped like a mittened hand. (The second most anthropomorphic state is Florida... but I'm not going there...) In much the same way that Texas is in love with its shape, and likes to use it everywhere in design, Michigan loves to flaunt its handy shape... In addition, Michiganians are fortunate to always carry a map of their state.

Unless of course, you happen to live in Michigan's upper peninsula... then you have to do something like this:

In the late 1980's to early 1990's, the Michigan Department of Tourism used as its slogan, "Say Yes! To Michigan." It was a silly slogan, accompanied by an insipid jingle (that is stuck in my head as I type). I was living in Michigan at the time, so I don't know how widespread the campaign was in other states, but the emphasis in-state was to encourage folks to spend their vacation money at home. Without a doubt, Michigan is a "Water Winter Wonderland" (an even earlier slogan) with much to offer to the outdoors enthusiast.

Meijer is a supermarket chain, founded in Michigan and based in the midwest. In conjunction with the Michigan Travel Bureau, Meijer produced a series of state travel maps and events brochures. I saved as many examples as I could find...

Death and Taxes

It is Tax Day in the United States...

Suffix Map

In the intersection between map nerds and language nerds... we find a map of adjectival forms of place names, from Language Log.

"The thought occurred to me - wouldn’t it be neat to have a map of the world, coloured in by which ending is used to describe its people?"



Who doesn't have thoughts like that?



Via The Stumblng Tumblr

Body Geographic

What better way to sell a book? Combine sex and maps! OK... perhaps that is a very narrow fetish market... Nonetheless, Geography by Sophie Cunningham, must turn a few heads in book stores...
Here we see the softcover edition... Mmmmmm.... maps. Thanks to Kel, from Lost in Place.
These book covers reminded me to pull out this magazine cover I saved many years ago. I posted another example of a "body map" back in October.

Apple and Potatoe Worlds

Kevin Van Aelst's color photographs "include every day foods and objects: bread, doughnuts, crackers, candy, floor tile, sweaters, and lint. These simple materials are arranged into shapes and patterns inspired by formulas found in science and mathematics, such as fractal geometry, chaos theory, biology and chemistry."

And geography!

Apple Globe, 2007, Digital C-Print




_________________________________________

Discovering that crunchy map reminded me to pull out and scan this advertisement I saved from a restaurant industry magazine back in the 1990's.

McCain Foods Limited, is the world's largest producer of frozen french fries.

Sadly, neither of these works of art can be found in any museum. Hopefully they ended up on someone's plate...

Ireland Victoria's

My friend, Victoria, came back from a trip to Dublin last week. Whenever my friends travel, I tell them, "Bring back some map postcards!"

She brought these three for me.

Her primary complaint was that there appeared to be little variety in map postcards. Everywhere she went, she saw these same two maps of the island...

_______________________
Interestingly, both of these cards decline to acknowledge any sort of international border with Northern Ireland (is that not an Absolut provocation, Jonathan? ;-) ...).

The second card (to the left) reminds me of another postcard I own, Utah: Aerial View at Night

Eventually, Victoria did find one particularly unique card from the community of Howth. Located on the peninsula of Howth Head on the north side of Dublin Bay.



Thanks again, Victoria!

[Victoria is also the friend that allowed me to scan her St. Lenin postcard after her trip to Prague.]

Satan, D.C.

The Washington Post is reporting today that some religious groups assert that satanic symbols were incorporated into the layout of Washington's streets:



While it is usually useless to try and disuade delusional conspiracy theorists... is no one bothered by the fact that one of the streets necessary to complete the pentagram does not exist? No problem, we'll just draw a dotted line to fill in the blank.

In addition they have it completely wrong about the "Lucifer Bunny" around the Capitol...

Clearly it is representative of Rich Uncle Pennybags...

More You Are Here

Yesterday, I wrote again about the magnificent "map art" book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. File this under "fun maps found while looking for something else"... While I was searching my library's catalog for a copy of this book (and disappointed that we don't own it) I came across these books with similar titles... and not too suprising, they have maps as part of their cover design:

You Are Here by Steve Horsfall

Four thirtysomething guys looking for love. Presumably they find it in Crete?



You Are Here: A Straight-Shooting Guide to Mapping Your Future by Danny Holland

Danny says, "You can overcome your obstacles, accomplish your life purpose, and live out your passion. It’s your choice. And it can start right now."

You Are Here 2008 Edition: A Guide to Over 380 Colleges and Unlimited Paths to Your Future by Kaplan

• Data and statistics on over 350 colleges for 2008
• 250 profiles of successful college graduates across 50 of today's hottest careers
• Job fact sheets for each of the 50 hottest careers
• Tips from professional organizations on entering specific career fields
• An inside look at 25 specially selected schools

On the Road to...?

It has not been my intention to turn this blog into a "Maps as Art" blog... but it certainly feels like it, lately. There have been so many good ones that have come my way...

I have been reading You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, edited by Katharine Harmon. This book consists of dozens of excellent examples of "maps as art". Many of them have been featured here and on other map blogs (such as Strange Maps). Buy the book, or see a large portion of it on Google Books. I would love to reproduce all of the images here, but that is more than a bit out-of-bounds. So I'll leave you with this colorful and entertaining painting by Howard Finster:

Howard Finster, All Roads One Road Headed the Same Way, 1978

Baptist preacher and renowned folk artist Howard Finster (1916-2001) devoted his life to art and his art to God... [Finster's map] generously offers many routes to a paradise that is detailed in its delights.

Folks who are not familiar with oustider art may not recognize the name Howard Finster, but music fans might recognize the cover art he did for the Talking Heads album, Little Creatures, which ironicaly, included a song titled "Road To Nowhere" AND a globe!

_______________________
Ms. Cartophiliac was an Art History major in college and completed her senior thesis on outsider artists. Thus, I have been introduced to the chaotic delights of outsider art. Our favoritest museum in the whole world is the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, where many examples of this art genre can be found.

Ms. Cartophiliac is the proud owner of this small Howard Finster sculpture. Unfortunately, we have been obliged to keep it safely stowed away in a closet. Our feline roommates are way too fond of knocking things off of shelves for the fun of it.

Preserving the Map in the Tent of Tomorrow

The New York Times is reporting today about efforts to preserve a half-acre terrazzo road map of New York State from the 1964-65 World’s Fair. "The map is hidden from public view on the floor of the abandoned, roofless Tent of Tomorrow in the New York State Pavilion, at what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. The 130-by-166-foot map has cracked and crumbled badly."

From the Tent of Tomorrow website:

The Tent of Tomorrow was the world's largest roadmap. Sponsored by Texaco, this giant facsimile of the Rand McNally map of New York state was composed of large squares of polished Terrazzo. The Map was one of the most popular features of the World's Fair, especially among residents of New York, who"walked the map" looking for their home town. For the 1965 season, many more towns were added to the map at the request of fairgoers who noticed their town missing during the 1964 season.

Here'a photo of how it looked when it was fresh and new:



Here is one of the tiles today still in fairly good condition:



The Queens Museum of Art currently has a exhibit in conjunction with the pilot conservation program. The site includes an interactive locator map.

Heavy Metal USA

This weighty piece of geographic art is on display in the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University:



Artist: Ian Brennan

Via Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog. Thanks again, Jerad

Bubblegum World

More map art. A bubblegum world... Better or worse than an Absolut World?

Bubblegumization, by Mike Estabrook. "Bubblegum and Wrappers on Canvas 2003. 60 X 84 in. This is a world map made entirely out of bubblegum and their wrappers. It is a pun on the globalizing of consumerist culture."

More of his work can bee seen at ArtCodex and re-title.com.

Map Impact

I am already a big fan of Worth 1000, an image manipulation contest site. It is always fun to browse their galleries and see what these PhotoShop wizards will create next. Of course, this image is my current favorite:



This entry, Map Impact, by "doehlman" was entered in the Liquid Assets 8 contest: "For this contest, you should swap any liquid with another object."

Creator Comments: A strawberry hits the big apple

Absolut World

As reported in La Plaza, a Los Angeles Times blog about Latin America:

Mexico reconquers California? Absolut drinks to that!

"The latest advertising campaign in Mexico from Swedish vodka maker Absolut promises to push all the right buttons south of the U.S. border, but it could ruffle a few feathers in El Norte."



"In an Absolut World"... Mexico didn't lose half their territory in a war with the United States in 1848.

Apparently there are a few Americans getting bent out of shape over this... I say, get a sense of humor... you won the war, remember?



Thanks to Jerad for the heads up!

Inflated Views

From the New York Times, December 8, 2001: On March 29, 1976, a simple, pastel map of New York City appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Drawn from the perspective of a low-flying bird looking west from Ninth Avenue, you could see the world receding from the city: the Hudson River, New Jersey, Kansas City, then the Pacific Ocean and Japan. It was Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," a drawing reproduced and imitated countless times. Every city wanted a version of its own. Steinberg once said that if he had gotten the proper royalties, "I could have retired on this painting." This inflated view of one's own importance is not the first time such a map has been created. Here is another look at New York in relation to the rest of the country, by Daniel K. Wallingford, in 1937; A New Yorker's Idea of the United States of America:

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Cover reproduced with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved. per Sheila Schwartz, Executive Director, The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Not to be outdone, here is a view from California:



As mentioned here before, Texas is in love with its geographic shape. They also like to tell us how everything is bigger in Texas. Below are two postcards from my collection that illustrate that infatuation:





And finally, on this postcard, Alabama, for reasons unclear, have an inflated view of themselves:

Atlas Madonna

The May 2008 Issue of Vanity Fair magazine features pop singer Madonna, holding a globe of the earth on her shoulders, for their annual "Green Issue". My first thought, upon seeing this image, was of Atlas, the Greek Titan, who bore the spheres of the heavens.

Joost Depuydt, at Maps & More, saw a different Titan (of the big screen)...

Singles Map of the United States

Wondering why you cannot find single people? Maybe you are in the wrong part of the country.

A Singles Map of the United States



Richard Florida writes:

Which of these two decisions do you think has a bigger impact on someone's life: finding the right job, or finding the right significant other? No one's going to argue with the notion that where you live affects your employment prospects. But the place you call home has a lot to do with your chances of finding the right partner as well. Having an enticing "mating market" matters as much or more than a vibrant labor market.

It's not just that some places have more singles than others. If you're a single man or a single woman the odds of meeting that special someone vary dramatically across the country.

Via Breakup Girl

Ten Nations of the United States

In an earlier post I discussed Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. In 1989, Garreau took a look at North America, erased all of the international, state and provincial borders and redrew the lines around regions that have common interests in culture, politics and and industry. This way of looking at regional interests, that transcend state and national boundaries, forever changed my understanding of those regions.

The folks at Beyond Red & Blue, a political blog, have updated this concept, using election data:

Beyond Red & Blue" was conceived about four years ago, in anticipation of the 2004 presidential election. The idea was to divide the United States into 10 regions of equal voting power, each with a distinct history and political bent... Keep in mind that for at least 60 years, no one has ever been elected president without carrying at least five of these regions.

The original article with the 2008 map was posted in September 2007, and last week offered more detail on What went into deciding the 10 regions. It is hard for me to think of myself in Western Ohio, and people living in Indiana or Illinois as having the same identity (Cumberland) as the folks in Appalachia, or that people in the San Joaquin Valley of California are part of the same voting block as North Dakota... But this approach to an electoral map is fascinating nonetheless.

Via The Electoral Map

Foolish Pangea

Google Earth Blog has preserved the 2008 Google Earth April Fools Joke. "Well, it turns out there is an April Fools Joke in Google Earth today after all! If you turn on the "Geographic Web" layer and then zoom all the way out (38000+ miles away from Earth) the Earth's continents merge into the theoretical Pangea (the way the continents may have appeared hundreds of millions of years ago)."

Unfortunately, they only kept the joke up for one day. April 1. I'm glad someone saved it.

via The Map Room

Cartographia: Mapping Civlizations

I know this book as been noted elsewhere, but I finally had an opportunity to go through it in detail when my library recieved its copy.

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations by Vincent Virga and The Library of Congress. This gorgeous coffee table-sized book attempts to represent a broad range of maps and mapping, from the earliest times to the present, as well as eastern and western traditions. Most of the maps come from the collections of the Library of Congress.

From the flyleaf:

More than 200 maps, selected from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress — the largest cartographic collection in the world — are reproduced in this sumptuous volume. Some of the rarest and most spectacular maps ever made are featured here, including:

• The Waldseemüller Map of the World from 1507, the first to include the designation "America"
• Pages from Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570, considered the first modern atlas
• Rare maps from Africa, Asia, and Oceania that challenge traditional Western perspectives
• William Faulkner's hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
• A 2001 map of the human genome

With their accompanying stories, the vivid color plates in Cartographia introduce the reader to an exciting new way of reading maps as travelogues—as living histories from the earliest imaginings about planet Earth to our current attempts at charting cyberspace, the latest of our “last frontiers.”

Here is a very ancient map, in cuneiform, from ancient Mesopotamia.

Below is a very Japanese map of Japan on porcelain.

As an example of modern maps, and the different ways they can present information, the authors also included Gastner, Shalizi, and Newman's 2004 presidential election cartograms.

A worthy addition to any cartophile's book collection.