cartography RSS

This map has rapidly become one of my most popular ones, so I thought I should do a write-up about it.  This tale begins with a risky decision to enter mortgagedom and buy an apartment within my current complex.  The former apartment which I was renting, was decorated in the style of a previous map series (PROJECT #130: SINGLE LINE TRAM MAPS) , and I wanted to switch things up.  I had previously started work on neighbourhood pub and bar maps (PROJECT #330: NEIGHBOURHOOD PUB & BAR MAPS), and the original idea was to simply expand in scale to cover...

As the previous blog post can attest, I have a keen appreciation for the beauty and variety of regional Victoria.  It probably comes as no surprise then, that I’ve always wanted to create a fantasy V/Line map - V/Line being the brand of Victoria’s regional rail network.  Afterall, why keep all the fantasy rail map magic to metropolitan Melbourne’s trains and trams?   Victoria is geographically small by Australian standards, but fairly large by global standards, being approximately the size of the United Kingdom, so where to start with my vision for a rail network that covers an area equal to...

After a couple of maps focussing on my visions for the rail and tram networks in Melbourne, I started thinking about the state of Victoria, and how regional centres are connected so well by the road network.  As much as my gunzel-ness leads me to a strong rail -bias, the road network in Victoria probably has the best connectivity in Australia, and I do love a good road trip.   Still in the mindframe of creating transit maps, I began to wonder how the highway network would look in the style of a transit map.  And one of the other aspects...

Back in 1923, about 60 years before I was even a “planning proposal”, someone had the idea of creating a more connected version of the tram network in Melbourne.  While Melbourne is the proud location of the largest tram network in the world, had this vision been realised, it would have been undisputedly at the top not just for size, but also connectivity.  You may think that Melbourne’s tram network covers a large part of the city, and whilst coverage across the inner city is largely good, it’s mainly a radial network beyond the Hoddle Grid, with buses often filling...

Cartography is such a diverse artform, evolving throughout the decades and serving whatever purpose it needs to, ideally with a sense of style.  I came across these series of maps in an op shop, and was amazed with them.   These printed in English series of tourism brochures were made around the 1950's or 1960's, and while thematically are similar acorss the series, each map has a distinct colour scheme and style. The maps and illustrations all appear to be hand drawn, and each map has around 3-4 colours.   Each map has different folds to, the Alps one opens...