I recently Tweeted about this, but it's too cool to confine to 140 characters. I found the Hand Drawn Map Association! Check this one out, the Blue Plate Map!
It's a great site to explore. Some of the maps suck a little bit, but every single one of them has more character than anything generated by a machine. You can have your cold, calculated, stunningly accurate GPS maps; I'll take maps generated by someone else's set of spatial relationships any day! The possibility that you might not reach your intended destination by following them is a large part of their beauty! Every hand-drawn map represents a paradigm shift and the opportunity to visit someone else's head space for a while.
I'm going to submit my own map soon, and rather than populate the dangerous, unknown areas with illustrations of sea monsters, I will sketch caricatures of social conservatives.
I can't wait to see your map. You crack me up.
ReplyDeleteKevin - you should check out the book "The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet" by Reif Larsen. It really focuses on this notion of nonstandard ideas about maps. You can borrow it from me if you don't want to buy it, but I think you'll dig it. :-)
ReplyDelete