We will not be conducting any freelance work on Friday, January 30th in solidarity and protest:
Please join us in striking!
I’ve wanted to do this - both relaunch #creativeCarto for community connection 🥰 and to be inspired and learn from all of you too 😍, but also because I really have wanted to be like so many others in geospatial who freely share information regularly
Both of these things had such an impact on me
Yay for #creativecarto!!
For the #30DayMapChallenge Day 17 prompt "A New Tool", we played around with Eduard to make a monochrome map of Colorado. While we bought our Eduard license years ago and have used it before, we're going to sneak it in as "new(ish)" with this prompt!
For the #30DayMapChallenge Day 16 theme’s “cell" we rasterized an old map we had made of land use around Soufrière, Saint Lucia into pixels!
For the #30DayMapChallenge Day 15 prompt "Fire", we failed at our self-given goal to keep things quick and simple and went down the rabbit hole to visualize the 2021 volcanic eruption of La Soufrière, Saint Vincent (which set us back a few days in prompts)
We ran out of steam to expand on this map, but for the #30DayMapChallenge Day 12 map's theme "2125" we used @noaa.gov Sea Level Rise data to visualize 10ft sea level rise in Portland, Maine (though that would be a bit of a drastic prediction for 100 years from now!)
For Day 11 of the #30DayMapChallenge's prompt "Minimal" we made a VERY quick map showing off one of @pinakographos.bsky.social's Project Linework handcrafted vector linework files: Geo-Metro. If you haven't found this resource yet, it's a fun one to find uses for (www.projectlinework.org)!
For Day 10 of the #30DayMapChallenge's prompt "Air" we're resharing a map we made last year to cope with the anxiety of waiting to hear from family and friends in the transboundary Grenadines following the direct hit by Hurricane Beryl on July 1, 2024.
For the #30DayMapChallenge Day 9's prompt "Analog" we wanted to share some of the map jewelry we've made over the years, particularly our custom, handmade, geospatially accurate—but wonderfully, uniquely imperfect—jewelry. (If you're interested, reach out at jewelry@tombolomapsdesign.com!)
For the #30DayMapChallenge Day 9's prompt "Analog" I sketched out a quick, small-child-friendly map and let my kiddo color it in 😋
For Day 8 of the #30DayMapChallenge's prompt "Urban", we refreshed a map of Kingstown, the capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, visualizing the impact of 2m sea level rise on essential services downtown, that was originally published in Guerrilla Cartography's “Water: An Atlas".
Do I know any Indigenous folks who make maps? Got a request for a paid design/cartography job and it'd be rad if I could connect you with them.
For Day 6 "Dimensions" of #30DayMapChallenge, we are going to brag about the GIS+Blender course we took from Elizabeth Rosenbloom. After only 5hrs of learning the UI and ways to work with geospatial data within the software, we were able to make this sunrise rending of the Galapagos Islands 🌅
For Day 5 "Earth" we refreshed a Pacific bathymetry map we made for our own "Map-A-Day" project (many years before the #30DayMapChallenge existed) to build up our original portfolio!
For Day 4 "My Data" of the #30DayMapChallenge we refreshed a map @alyolli.bsky.social made almost a decade ago while living in Portland, Maine after a day trip via ferry to walk around Peaks Island with two wonderful childhood friends (and a trusty old chunky Garmin GPS 😉)!
For our next map for the #30DayMapChallenge, for Day 3's prompt "Polygons", we made a quick map of Burlington, Vermont!
Another quick map for the #30DayMapChallenge for the prompt "Lines"! We grabbed Magnificent Frigatebird tracking data from Movebank and highlighted one of their tagged birds, "Boyd", who demonstrates the vast distances this species can explore while foraging.
We're going to try and keep things QUICK and SIMPLE for the #30DayMapChallenge this year! So here, for Day 1 of the Challenge, is our response to the prompt "Points", showing all the trees in and around Cheesman Park where @alyolli.bsky.social lived for her first half decade in Colorado!
After months, I finally remembered to put this print on my store page, so that people know where to look if they want a charmingly distressing world map.
somethingaboutmaps.com/Storefront
And if you'll be at #NACIS2025 in Louisville, you can see it in person and deface it with dry erase markers.
Kicking off #NACIS2025 with @cchurchili.bsky.social & “Advanced Terrain Modeling with Blender”. If you’re unfamiliar his work, it’s amazing: churchillgeo.com
Bringing life to maps with motion — the amazing @sarahbell.bsky.social Animating Maps with After Effects
www.sarahbellmaps.com/animated-fly...
#NACIS2025
Panel on the state of freelance mapping.
freelancemaps.org
#NACIS2025
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
Happy to share the release of the 2nd edition of Mapping, Society, and Technology. Props to @smmanson.bsky.social for wranging multiple of us to update it. It's a free text suitable for many introductory GIS courses, hosted at UMN Libraries. open.lib.umn.edu/mapping/ #gischat
Jerry added great material throughout the book, joining work from other contributing authors. Shout out to Dudley Bonsal, @alyolli.bsky.social, Eric DeLuca, Rachael Huerta Carpenter, Jennifer Immich, Melinda Kernik, Steven Manson, Laura Matson, Sara Holiday Nelson, and Julie Santella.
Five days remain to take advantage of early bird discount rates for GIS-Pro in the Rockies! Don't miss the opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired in Denver in October.
Make your plans ASAP: thegpn.org/page/GIS-Pro
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.
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...
