Greetings

[Chris Solem]

I’m neither a cartographer nor an artist, but I find myself drawn to the art of map-making. I particularly like early maps of the New World but imaginary maps also intrigue me. As a kid I remember being fascinated with A. A. Milne’s map of “Hundred Acre Wood,” and I would immerse myself in the road maps my parents would pick up from gas stations during summer vacations.

I have been using Photoshop forever and am somewhat familiar with Illustrator. And since I’m also a history buff, I was thinking of posting some animated and/or interactive maps, historical and imaginary, online. Can’t anything be mapped? I’m not even yet sure how I’m going to do this—I suppose at one time I would have used Adobe Flash, but now I’m thinking of HTML 5, though I’m considering other options.

Years ago, I remember seeing a documentary on cartography, at the end of which someone read Elizabeth Bishop’s poem: “The Map”; here are the first four lines:

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.

Chris

[Naen]

I'd really like to see what you come up with as far as making maps interactive. I've tried to do a simple version of that kind of thing on a website before.

[Chris Solem]

I'd really like to see what you come up with as far as making maps interactive. I've tried to do a simple version of that kind of thing on a website before.

Having spent quite a few years developing websites (though a while back), I would think using layers and JavaScript would be the simplest way to accomplish that. And from what little I've read HTML 5 does a great job of using CSS and JavaScript to animate.