Free Drawing the US Map

A Drawing for July 4th in this free range, freedom-worshipping, libertarian age. When you try to "free draw" something as complex as the map of the states you find how uneasily they sit together. The shape of one state is supposed to nest perfectly into the next but if you aren't rigorously measuring and following the exact outlines they don't match very well at all. Most Americans don't remember the time before FDR's various bureaus and departments knit the states together, and then Eisenhower's interstate highways locked them into a uniform grid. Then the television networks did the same invisibly and the only things dividing us were the time zones. For a period of four decades or so we really were E Pluribus Unum. Before FDR main roads traveling across one state often disappeared at the state border. Time zones and laws of commerce were willy-nilly. Citizens from the north driving across the south were viewed as foreigners. They were liable (if they weren't careful) to find themselves on the wrong side of the local sheriff. Southerners visiting the north encountered outrageous customs that were almost as outrageous as their own. After a pleasant interval we seem to be disuniting again, in opinions and sentiments if not legally.

A Gelato Map of Rome

I did this map for Food + City magazine, art directed and designed by Julie Savasky of Pentagram/Austin. Having spent time in Rome eating gelato it was a delicious project. Too bad they don't send artists on location.

Political Geography-The Road to 2012

I did this illustration for Northwestern University to help them promote a panel discussion about the election. The event was titled "The Road to 2012". They'd seen the POETRY magazine cover I posted on my website and liked that look. I changed the houses from familiar suburban ramblers and moderns into 21st century mansionettes shaped like red and blue states (choosing states with recognizable outlines––there are a lot of rectangles.) In the final version we added signs with the electoral college count for each, but I like the basic version, which is more conceptual and interesting for being less concrete. Raul Torres art directed.

Roma

When it's cold and gray here in Minneapolis it sometimes helps to spend a little time drawing a warmer, sunnier place. Somewhere I've been, in this case Rome, my favorite neighborhood of the old city between Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. I can almost smell the motorino fumes.

Istanbul

I did this map for the contents page of the special Istanbul issue of Das Magazin in Zurich. The art direction was by Christian Haas at Raffinerie. It's interesting to do a map of a place I've never been to in a language I've never been able to read. But it turned out rather well, I think. I especially like the letterforms I created, and the varied size and heft of them. I'd still love to visit sometime. I've read about the place enough, I think I'd know my way around.

Camera Setting

This drawing appeared in last month's issue of The Believer, art directed by Jason Polan. I recently did a whole series of these arrangements of familiar objects. I began with the familiar place setting, plate center, tableware left and right, glass at one o'clock, etc. When I named this one "camera setting" I realized its double meaning. But there is no meaning to it. No reason behind it. The arrangement is arbitrary. We organize our lives and our belongings along similar lines, with familiar protocols, like items at our desks or dinner tables. Likewise our computer desktops, which are intangible and fugitive. Order reassures us the world is going to function even when it won't.

My debut in Rolling Stone

Thirty years ago I sent an envelope full of xeroxes to the art department at Rolling Stone. They liked the art enough to publish quite a few of my little maps and squibs on the letters page in 1981 and 82. A nice gig, but I was never named gardening editor, never met Hunter Thompson. My style has evolved quite a lot since my salad days.

Thanksgiving USA

I got a fun asssignment from Family Circle last month. (A very smartly designed magazine; if you haven't looked recently, do.) The geography of Thanksgiving idea is reminiscent of a Geography of Christmas map I did for Graphique de France a while back, but it also reminded me of those elementary school murals we did of pilgrims and Indians and turkeys and the whole scene. Cut paper and paste. FC Creative Director Karmen Lizzul is one of my old friends from SPY magazine, where I did several maps for her.

Bush Jr. Returns

Junior is back on TV this week, touting a new book about how he grappled with decisionmaking. One can almost picture it. Anyway, I thought it might be worth trotting out this diagram I painted for the New Yorker. This is as accurate a picture of the Bush White House's decidering process as I've seen. Flow charts are a very useful form. A map of a thought process or a criminal transaction or, in this case, a muddled philosophy.

An Old Map of a New City

Well, new-ish. People don't realize that L.A. was a few orange groves and unpaved streets a hundred years ago. Fewer realize the discovery of oil made it into a city. Movies were incidental. I did this map years ago when I was doing regular maps for Rolling Stone. I've come back around to this kind of linework, but now do it in pencil, mostly. There is something wonderful about pictorial shorthand. It's almost hieroglyphic.

A Campus Map

Maps are usually contained inside rectangles, and over the years I've become adept at decorating those rectangles, but once in a while a map is needed for an odd shape. It's fun when this happens. It's especially challenging when the shape doesn't match the landscape being set into it. Distortion is a useful tool, one mapmakers use all the time; after all our continents are inscribed on a globe, not a flat sheet. Catalone Design needed a map to go on the inside of a fold-out box designed to contain Q&A cards. I thought it was interesting that the shape is cruciform; the client was a Jesuit school. There is a bit of Ludwig Bemelmans and Abe Birnbaum in the handling of the buildings and the patterning in the trees. A nice piece altogether, thanks to the art direction of Lisa Catalone.

Cartography and Beer

I did this map a few weeks ago for the Washington Post. It did not require traveling to all of the places noted or drinking all of the beers. (And, yes, I realize that Europe and America are not this close together, Europe is not this large, and Africa and South America do not overlap.)

City Maps

I did this map for a corporate client sometime in the 90s. It's always been a favorite of mine. The art director was Megan Taylor. Since it was the centerfold of the publication, Megan had the clever idea of doing the title lettering in a pop-up, which was fun. It's exciting to see what art directors might do to take my art to another level.

A city map presents a whole different set of demands from a regional map. Which streets to show, which to leave out. Which landmarks to illustrate, and how to integrate these illustrated elements in a way that doesn't confuse the eye. I like to think of the street grid as a floor painting on which these illustrated elements are choreographed. Map illustration is more than a simple rendering of a place; it requires re-imagining it. I think it's important to have a rationale like this, a set of rules, so that the concept doesn't get muddled or too elaborate. After many years drawing maps, these rules and tricks have become second nature to me, shaping how I visualize a place. When I read about travel I always look for a map, always want one. I need to know where I am, and where the writer is leading me.

Other Places

Today I'm painting a map for the Washington Post, so I thought I'd post a map. I've always loved maps, looking at them, drawing them, collecting them. A map is an entirely artificial construct, a mental image, in other words it's something a photographer can't do with a camera. It's cloudy and rainy out today, so here's a sunnier place to contemplate, with its various attractions painted large.

The Geography of Christmas

I did this as a black and white map first. I published a black and white card line for several years, and still like doing plain, unelaborated line art. But Graphique de France asked me to do some cards for them and this was one that I thought would look good in color. I also did maps of London, Paris, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles for them. The geography of Christmas required some invention. I especially like the town of Yes, Virginia. As in "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." If any one is mystefied by anything I included, please ask. All details relate to something specific in the popular culture.

What's For Dinner

I have never shot a pheasant, in anger or otherwise. But I have eaten it and love it. If we had a smaller family we might have pheasant for Thanksgiving. The first time I remember was when my father came home with one from his Saturday golf game. It had been hit by a car and he finished it off mercifully with a golf club, probably a nine iron. It was delicious, and no buckshot. I did this interesting cutaway for an ad agency. The art director loved it so much that he forgot to return the original. Has this ever happened to you? It's theft, but flattering in a way. I enjoyed giving the fowl a diagrammatic treatment. I borrowed liberally from some of those pork and beef ones done for Armour & Co and hung up behind butchers' counters. With jokes.

A Campus Map

I did this map of a "typical college campus" for the people at FISH. I had to ask myself What comprises a typical college campus? There'll be a stadium, a science building, the student union, but what else? What makes frat row look Greek? It has nothing to do with Ionian columns or classical sculpture. I once described our local university as a museum of relegated architectural forms (I cribbed the analogy from F. Scott Fitzgerald) and therein lies its charm. Its heterogeneity demonstrates the importance of liberal education, of not settling for one form. Perhaps uniformity shows lack of imagination.

Roma

When I've spent time in a city it can be harder to illustrate a map of it. The things I remember, the places I liked, the cafés and piazzas I hung around in, insist on being included. Like the best stories, it's all about selection. And Rome is like a wonderful overstuffed museum, you step back to get a photo of a Baroque church and you stumble over a statue by Bernini. I walked Rome with a 1912 Baedeker in hand. A modern street map can tell you where you are but it doesn't capture the atmosphere of a place; it reduces the fabric of an ancient city to a soulless calculation.