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The Beauty Of Maps
BBC 4 are currently showing an excellent series called The Beauty Of Maps. I missed the first episode but what I have seen so far has been brilliant. The tagline to the series is “Seeing the art in cartography” and art it is. Many of the maps featured are very old and extremely beautiful, some with the most amazing colours. In fact, it seems that during the “golden period” or cartography in the Netherlands many artists made a living colouring and drawing scenes on maps.
One featured artist on the programme was contemporary illustrator Stephen Walter who has created several modern city maps of London in pen. The map below which is greatly reduced in size took two years to complete.
Close-up you can see the individual symbols and tiny drawings which make up the map above.
A close-up on a different map shows it literally bursting with names of buildings, humorous nicknames and surprisingly detailed drawings of buildings.
If you can access the BBC iPlayer, then you might be interested in watching the programme called Cities Out Of Chaos which features Stephen Walter.
Tags: Illustration, Maps
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I do missed the first episode , but saw the second one containing this map by Stephen Walter. Was amazed by the beautiful chaos of the map, by more so by the social commentary he included. Inspired me me want to create maps detailing social aspects of our lives.
Great series from BB4.
Hi Robin
Yep it’s a super programme and I’m so glad I just happened upon it. Was just flicking through and saw these fabulous illustrations. Very cool and inspired me too.
these pictures are amazing!!