Carl Churchill: “Immersing myself in thousands of high quality maps allowed me to develop a certain style.”

Very Expensive Maps

Union City cartographer and Wall Street Journal graphics editor Carl Churchill talks his map vocation and EDM avocation, spending two weeks on an elaborate wildflower-detection remote sensing script before an editor (correctly) tossed it, making fantasy maps with GIS tools, what drum loops taught him about radar interferometry, why "get paid to do what you love" will make you fall out of love, and how you can make beautiful maps with a good inspo board, a tolerance for academic papers and a willingness to try. See his maps at churchillgeo.com

• Glen Canyon Mœbius-palette map
• Ouray County Imhof-style map
• Eduard Imhof’s maps
• Carl’s tutorial on making your own
• Carl’s tutorial on creating fantasy maps with real data
• QGIS RVT toolbox
• Profile curvature
• Californias wet year superbloom
• ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop
• Avenza MAPublisher
• ArcGIS Pro
• QGIS
• National Land Cover Database
• Charlie Loyd’s remote sensing data compendium

Cartographers he recommends:

• Aileen Buckley
• Josie Sajbel
• Clare Trainor
• Christina Shintani
• Emma Brown
• Becca Holdhusen
• Lauren Tierney
• Júlia Ledur
• Marie Patino
• Wanmei Liang
• Maddy Grubb
• John Nelson
• Cooper Thomas
• Tom Patterson

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