The Wonderlust Journal » I Love Maps

“A map they could all understand”

Eliza Coleman — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:59:00 +0000

I Love Maps >> I’M DYING THIS IS SO AMAZING

Eliza Coleman — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:59:00 +0000

THIS IS A REAL MAP. I saw this and thought someone had painted something pretty on top of an old map.

Not so, which means this might be the most amazing map I’ve ever seen.

In the early 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers commissioned a guy named Harold Fisk to make a map of the various courses the Mississippi River has taken over time. He showed each course in a different color, to show when and how they happened. This is the result.

Just goes to show, the representation of practical information can be executed in a way that is also aesthetically pleasing.

I feel like I could look at these forever. I’ve searched and searched and I’m pretty sure you can’t buy any prints (original or reproduced) of this, but I wish you could*! I would frame a whole bunch and hang them on my wall!

(*If anyone can find any originals and would like to give them to me, it would be like the coolest gift eveerrrr, just sayin)

Rivers are constantly in flux, as they erode banks and make deeper curves (or “meanders”), until the meanders become so meandering that the two sides of the curve almost touch. At this point, the river cuts off the curve and so that it has a straight path again, and it leaves an oxbow lake behind.

Here’s a detail:

When all the pages, each showing a different section, of his study are fit together, they form this long continuous path of the Mississippi. I can’t get the image to load any larger, but it looks really cool when it’s shown as the same width as the pages above.

THE ALLUVIAL VALLEY OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI RIVER
Harold Fisk, 1944

via Pixels & Arrows

I Love Maps >> MTA Map, Reimagined

Eliza Coleman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:00:00 +0000

I love this reimagining of the MTA subway map by Julia Rothman. She really captures the whimsical sense of being able to go underground and get on a train and pop up at somewhere else completely different and exciting.

Available here through the MTA Transit Museum.
Julia Rothman website here.

I Love Maps >> Vintage Classroom Maps

Eliza Coleman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:19:00 +0000

I really love maps, of all kinds, practical maps on road trips, treasure maps, historical maps, fictional maps in books like The Hobbit, etc., and this type, from Style de Vie at the LA Mart, recently caught my eye.

Style de Vie has a collection of old French classroom maps, the kind that look like they are printed on thick, waxy canvas and could be pulled down from a roll-up mechanism. The ones they have are from French colonial days, so the colors have aged and have this appealing nostalgic tone to them, as if they are lit with pink bulbs.

The font, outdated borders, total lack of topographical detail (sometimes historical maps have so many lines, and these are pleasingly simplistic and solid-colored), and French country names add extra appeal.

The Style de Vie ones, which are framed really nicely, are out of my price range, but I’ve added them to my LustList and am going to be on the lookout for them at fleamarkets… if you come across any, let me know!