How I Made the Essential Geography
A pillar of the Essential Geography’s readability is its manual-digital construction. For this, I used a computer as a power-assisted drafting tool, and a darkroom, rather than as a mechanical device.
I drafted the lines and placed the type entirely by eye, allowing me to manage each detail for maximum readability. To understand one advantage to spending the abundant extra time that is needed to work by eye; in the side-by-side images below, compare how much more cleanly the rivers on the Essential Geography, right, harmonize spatially with the roadways. Here, the Colorado, one of the great rivers or the West, runs along I-70. In the mechanical cartography image, left, this iconic river is actually hard to see, even in this enlargement.
To illustrate the terrain for this edition, I spent four years developing digital photo-editing techniques, which I used to play three shade images off one another. Shade images included one with typical NW light, one with vertical light, and one shaded by elevation. The resulting terrain image has the aesthetic of a watercolor painting that's been rendered to draw the eye to form and space. Form and space complete the geographic picture. They add terrestrial context to the overprinting cartography. When I finally arrived at the soft, vibrant and greatly-generalized approach to the terrain, that you see here, geography fell into place.
In addition to maximizing readability, manual-digital techniques give my work a human touch, a natural character that is relatable and pleasing to the eye.
National Geographic, left. Essential Geography, right.