What's new with the Art of Geography; + mapping, panoramas, and info design
The page where you can sign up for the beta test and thereby get the download location is at http://www.artofgeography.com/maps/fp/beta-test-mapset.html
This new variation of my “core” Forest Park map which uses a different approach to showing the topography and ground cover, more like the style of map in the popular Walk There! book (I had developed four possible styles for Walk There!, and the one that was chosen was my favorite).
This map of Portland bakeries was first unveiled in February 2011. It’s a bit of an experiment since no streets are labeled. In order to work on a letter size page, there’s not much room for street names. However the general neighborhood centers should be evident — for instance Alberta Street has a fabulous cluster of bakeries.
A word about the parameters for choosing what is shown… I thought the map should be about baked items, which leaves out chocolatiers and ice creameries and candy stores for another map. I tried to include places that focus on baked goods (breads, croissants, pies, cakes, cupcakes, cookies, etc). I went back and forth on places like Random Order and Pix.
I hadn’t really noticed it before making the map, but it is striking how some neighborhoods are bakery free, or have just one bakery for miles and miles of city. Apologies to the neighborhoods that fell off the edge of the cookie… it just wouldn’t be legible if the entire region was included.
The map is not for sale anywhere. Now it’s ready for wider feedback.
Download the PDF.
June 2011 update: There have been a few changes since March… just re-download the above link to get the latest version.
Join us for an evening of
appreciation. To you, our
donors, to the wonders
of Forest Park, and to those
who capture its spirit.
Monday, November 29th,
5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Northwest Natural: 220 NW 2nd Ave. Portland, Oregon 97209
Book signing, food and drink. All Forest Park Conservancy members receive 10% off signed editions of Marcy Houle’s new release, One City’s Wilderness.
rsvp to: lisa@forestparkconservancy.org
What I’ve been told is Marcy will talk about the book, and I’ll add some brief comments about the maps.
Third Edition
Marcy Cottrell Houle
Maps by Erik Goetze
Situated in the rugged hills west of Portland, Oregon, Forest Park is one of the largest urban parks in the world and the only city wilderness park in the United States. The park is home to hundreds of native plants and animals and offers more than eighty miles of trails–all within minutes of downtown Portland.
This updated and expanded edition of One City’s Wilderness provides directions to twenty-nine hikes of varying length, difficulty, and scenery, covering every trail within the 5,100-acre park. Each hike is illustrated with a new, full-color map, and a fold-out, full-color map of the entire park is included inside the back cover.
Marcy Houle shares the history of Forest Park, introduces the people who fought to preserve it, and explores the role stewards play today. She describes the park’s critical wildlife corridor, its exceptional watersheds, and important native interior forest habitat. She encourages people of all ages to take an “All Trails Challenge”–learning about the unique nature of the park by exploring every trail. The book also includes bird, plant, and mammal checklists and eighty-four color photographs of native plants and birds.
For its recreational and educational opportunities as well as its extraordinary natural beauty, Forest Park is unquestionably America’s premier urban forest. One City’s Wilderness, in its updated third edition, continues to be the authoritative, complete guide to Portland’s greatest natural resource.
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
The book is 6×9 inches, 256 pages. Color maps, color photographs, bibliography, index and fold-out overview map. ISBN 978-0-87071-588-4.
Cartographer’s notes This was an exciting project that built on my existing Forest Park map and took it to the next level. It was an honor to be picked to make this book’s maps, and a pleasure to work with Marcy. OSU Press made it as easy as possible to be part of a wonderful book’s rebirth. The printing quality of the color maps exceeds what I thought was possible for a paperback.
I’ll post more details about the maps in the book and a small sample in the Art of Geography map area.
I’ll be at the following events which will feature this book:
Audubon Society’s Wild Arts Festival
For over 29 years the Audubon Society of Portland has celebrated the Wild Arts Festival, which has brought together an eclectic mix of artists and authors all with a soft spot in their hearts for the natural world. The Festival is one of the Society’s premier fundraising events, with all proceeds going to support the many critical education, conservation, and animal rehabilitation programs we support. Authors who will be participating this year include Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Michael Pyle, Marcy Houle, Robin Cody and James Davis- to name just a few. We will have about 16 authors each day.
This year the Festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, November 20-21 — the weekend before Thanksgiving — at Montgomery Park.
One City’s Wilderness Book Signing
Monday, November 29 at NW Natural, 5:30pm
It’s sad to have to remove Sahagun and See’s off the map as they are no longer there.
The “chocolate map” is a postcard map that I created Feb 12, 2007. I had noticed that there was practically a chocolate district spanning the Pearl and Downtown, and I thought it would be fun to propose a “Chocolate district walk” whereby you can visit all of them. The map shows six (formerly eight) chocolate shops within a ten block radius in Portland. The postcard has not been printed and distributed except my personal copies that I’ve given to the shop owners and friends.
I’m waiting for a shipment of a related product to come in–last word was in a week or two. This thumbnail shows how the layout has been refined since I first posted news of this poster map last April.
“The folks at Metro make it easy to go on urban treks with their indispensable “Walk There!” guide, which has 50 walks throughout the area, including a number that are so obscure that even residents might not know about them.
The guide comes in a handy 4 1/2-by-6-inch size — perfect for sliding into the side pocket of your cargo shorts — and is a bargain at $9.95 at area bookstores. Even better, Metro has the maps and detailed walk descriptions available online, making it a cinch to download and print maps to guide you to your newest urban adventure. ”
http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2010/08/10_enticing_urban_walkabouts_h.html
Note: the small maps used in the Oregonian article are not the detailed ones in the book–apparently the newspaper wanted simplified versions as thumbnails for the story.
I am planning on making the Forest Park poster map available in both horizontal and vertical orientations. Sometimes the space you have for a poster is wider rather than tall and narrow. No guarantees a horizontal map would look like this thumbnail, but that’s how the beta version is shaping up.
Both orientations would have 20 foot contour lines, trail mileages, Wildwood and Leif mileposts, show surrounding streets, parking lots and TriMet bus stops. It will be nice if this framing with more of the Willamette River makes the cut.
The exact date is not clear yet, but I’m guessing it will be available around the end of summer 2010. It’s too early to nail down pricing, but since you will get a real physical product to hang on your wall, it will have to cover the cost of making it.
The map has been updated in many ways
Many thousands of tiny changes made: the map is currently at version 732; the one last posted on Art of Geography was version 618. Each increment to the version number represents a bundle of edits to the map. There’s too many changes to describe in one post, so I’ll be describing some of the improvements over the next few months. I expect more refinements to occur before it heads to official release.
To date there’s only been a few copies of the map in poster format given to friends and fellow map-makers. Even then they were not true one sheet prints; multiple sheets of super-B size paper were carefully spliced together to form the appearance of one sheet. As someone who as a child was excited to unfold those large National Geographic map inserts, I’m really thrilled at the prospect of this map being available as a large poster print. To me, there’s something very compelling about seeing Portland’s Forest Park take up an appreciable extent of a wall.
As the actual date draws nearer I expect to post more details about pricing and the actual size. I’m anticipating using a print-on-demand service such as ImageKind or other service which can handle the unusual print size, handle orders, and ship directly to customers rather than the Art of Geography having to stock inventory. If you have experience selling maps this way, I’m certainly interested in hearing how it has gone for you.
“Metro’s ever-popular Walk There! guide recently won several international awards at the annual Environment Systems Research Institute International User Conference held earlier this month in San Diego. The guide’s maps to great places to walk around the Portland-Vancouver area took home two top prizes, including a best overall win.
The ESRI International User Conference, the world’s largest event dedicated to geographic information system (GIS) technology, is a weeklong gathering that draws thousands of GIS software users, working in diverse industries, from across the globe. More than 12,000 people attended this year’s conference. Each year the conference includes a Poster Gallery, a large football field-sized room filled with nearly 2000 posters competing in 16 categories.
Walk There! was entered into the Best Cartographic Design: Map Series or Atlas – Press Copy category by Matthew Hampton, a senior transportation and planner, and Erik Goetze, a member of Metro’s creative services team. Eight maps from the guide were presented along with informational content about the Walk There! program. The maps took first place in this particular category and later went on to win best overall, beating out all other first-place finishers and prevailing over 2,000 entries.”
