New poster! Hachure illustrations of the highest Cascade Range volcanoes. This one took a lot of experimentation to get the layout right. If you or someone you know loves this area, check it out. www.etsy.com/listing/4373...

The Alliance of Freelance Cartographers has a new website! Thanks to @alyolli.bsky.social for getting it off the ground. It hosts past editions of the survey, as well as other resources. www.freelancemaps.org/home

I’m surrounded by stunning, dramatic landscapes, yet I’m sat in Squamish Public Library hand-drawing* a map of Mt Cook… (*tracing from reference)

I love the map, the timeline, the debunking of a myth, and the face that the myth even exists. 10/10, would Storrow again

#MapsInTheWild Southern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the Juan de Fuca Strait, in a compass in the ground in Victoria, BC

My time at #ICC2025 in Vancouver has come to an end. This morning I was the secondary delegate representing New Zealand at the 20th General Assembly of the International Cartographic Association, voting to approve Warsaw as the hosts of #ICC2027. Might see you there!

The Indonesians have brought their spectacularly talented kids to #ICC2025 again. Yes, this is my biennial sarcastic children's map competition post. Four. Years. Old... FOUR!!! Do me a favour 🤦🤣🤣🤦🤣

Posted without comment

At this scale you can basically see @johnnelsonmaps.bsky.social’s garden shed office

I thought we’d collectively agreed that just pointing and laughing at people’s “bad” maps, without offering constructive advice for improvement, was something that we’d confined to the regrettable past?

You know it’s gonna be a great day of maps when it starts with The Pirates!

@chaneyswiney.com are these yours? Spotted in the #ICC2025 Map Gallery

I knew Canada was big but this is ridiculous…

I didn’t listen to a word of @kennethfield.bsky.social’s #ICC2025 talk. I was fixated on working out if the tonearm and volume dial on his record player were moving through the 15min talk, or if I was just imagining it. I s’pose not listening to a talk is kind of breaking the rules of a conference…

I thought discussions got heated when cartographers try to define what is and isn’t considered a “map”. I’ve just spent three hours in a room of cartographers discussing what is and isn’t considered an “atlas”… I need a beer…

Let’s do this! #ICC2025

Let’s do this! #ICC2025

I spent far longer talking to the immigration officer about maps than I did about actual work permit things, but now I’m officially in Canada and able to work anywhere and everywhere for the next two years!

One final bit of plane window remote sensing, waving goodbye to the South Island/Te Waipounamu as I make my way to Vancouver for a year or two, starting with #ICC2025

*puts out of office auto-replies on for over a year* Well, that’s almost half a decade at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. Time to move to Canada! 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

Still working on editing the paper, but thanks to @southarrowmaps.co.nz, we've now got a method that seems to work from any viewing angle, allowing animation doodles like this.

“Frappe frappe” “Qui est lá?” “J’adore…” “J’adore qui?” “J’adore qui not working?”

Just wrapped up my latest side project: my first ever map of a #NationalPark. I illustrated #IsleRoyale, which sits in #LakeSuperior, in the semiautomated hachure style I've been developing this last year. More details, and a download, on the blog: somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/a...

iNaturalist Animals and Plants xkcd.com/3118/

New, super-detailed Dry Falls interpretive map from the Washington Geological Survey. #iceagefloods #missoulafloods #channeledscablands #geomorphology washingtonstategeology.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/n...

I can see my house* on this map *where I’m dog/house sitting for a couple of weeks in August, on Vancouver Island

I found one of my old notebooks with a draft sketch map of the “12 Pubs of Christmas” from a few years back. Sadly the full map never materialised but I’m glad to have found this sketch! I still enjoy the two ideas for scale bars: “SCALE VARIES WITH PINTS” “SCALE SUBJECT TO PERSONAL PERCEPTION”

Plan oblique topographic map rendered in #blender!! Thanks to @southarrowmaps.co.nz @pinakographos.bsky.social & @stim3on.bsky.social for getting me pointed in the right direction. Now comes the hard work of using this technique in a map.

Fix This Sign xkcd.com/3113/

Now available as a cartoon I can draw for you! www.worldofmoose.com/collections/...

It always feels like a special treat when I get to make a map that isn’t in the NZ Transverse Mercator projection. Currently making a poster of the NZ Search & Rescue Area of Responsibility, using a custom Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection.

Top insights on mapping from our colleague @tierneymaps.bsky.social Looking forward to presenting with her and @johnnelsonmaps.bsky.social at #EsriUC. Bookmark the Thematic Mapping Tech Workshops. youtu.be/zF6z_Z7m9gI?...

There's still time to register to attend the free NZ Carto Soc seminar day "Legends in the Making: Maps for 2020s and Beyond", this Friday at Victoria University of Wellington's Kelburn Campus. www.cartography.org.nz/seminar2025 I'll be giving an overview of what the LINZ Viz Squad has been up to

I am *very* tardy in sharing this, but: last August I was honored to speak at GeoCart '24 in Aotearoa New Zealand. My first ever keynote! "Sharing the Emotional Work of Mapping" — have a look to hear me discuss why mappers should share more of their feelings about their work youtu.be/26sIj4iHiss?...

#MapsInTheWild A simple yet necessary guide to the restroom layout at Punky Brewster, to avoid any sit down/stand up embarrassment at the Aotearoa Stout Challenge 2025. Bonus photo of three of the stouts on offer

Happy 36½th birthday to me, and happy 4th birthday to South Arrow Maps’ first published maps! southarrowmaps.co.nz/cartography/...

Is anyone else going to ICC 2025 and keen to find some shared accommodation to make staying in Vancouver ever so slightly less extremely expensive?

The irony of a reference map not being able to be referenced because it’s obscured by a “reference only” sticker is not lost on me. I guess I can’t admire one of my maps in print at @christchurchlib.bsky.social 🤦‍♂️

I’m so grateful that threads like these have followed Moose from The Bird Site. Waaay before I started a South Arrow Maps account, I followed people like Moose purely because they make me chuckle. They add whimsy to my day and, boy, is that something we could all do with more of. Give it a read.

I'm off to #Canada 🍁 and I'm looking for #jobs! I'm looking for roles in BC/AB in or around #Vancouver / #Calgary / Canadian #Rockies / remote. Open to anything #GIS & #cartography. 11+ years experience across ArcGIS, QGIS, FME, Adobe, Blender… Please get in touch if you have any leads! #gischat

New on the blog: "Planetfall," in which I go into great detail about making a fun map based upon a 1999 computer game. One of the most technically demanding projects of my career, for a very niche audience. somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/p... #SMAC

The survey is closing up at the end of the week! Please consider taking this if you did any amount of freelance cartography last year. Your data is invaluable to our community (we get many comments from folks saying how they've benefitted from this sampling of the community).

Out today: storm surge maps I did for @sciam.bsky.social! This was a fun one. I had a massive raster showing surge estimates that I simplified down to show the big picture. Evenly-placed symbols along the coast, showing the median surge in the area. www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-...

I’ve never been so confident at a niche pub quiz question, thanks solely to many years spent browsing and being inspired by @pinakographos.bsky.social’s maps in the Ecological Atlas of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas

Spot the (presumably non-deliberate) mistake… Two sides to the same wayfinding sign in Sumner, with the #map oriented to the direction you’re facing.

Saying my final goodbyes to Gandalf and his eagles before they’re permanently removed from Wellington airport on Friday. They’ve been here for 12 years.

And they say AI can’t do creativity…

Reminiscing on two years ago, when I left the ICA Mountain #Cartography Workshop and was plotting a road trip through Colorado and Utah, with guidance from a Benchmark atlas gifted to me by @chaneyswiney.com. I think this was in a hostel bar after a day of skiing…

I reposted this yesterday as I thought it was a funny yet effective bit of viz. I thought it was just a single image, showing that the *actual* depth of the Titanic is irrelevant; it’s just much deeper than the MR, therefore too deep to raise. I hadn’t realised it’s a whole thread of a diagram…!

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...