Back in 2005 we started working on a map of San Juan Island, part of a group of islands with the same name in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State. The islands are a popular vacation destination near Seattle, with nature as the primary draw. Orcas and other whales are plentiful in the islands as well as numerous birds. The islands are also popular with artists and nearby are the tulip fields of the Skagit River Delta.

The local Windermere Real Estate office in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island asked us to create a map they could share with visitors, with the requirement that it showed and labeled EVERY road on the island for the purposes of real estate as well. We created that map and it quickly became the most popular map of the island, going through several printings. That success in turn led to us creating maps for 2 more of the islands in the group, Orcas Island and Lopez Island, both maps becoming just as popular.

Click the Read On link to see an interactive sample of the maps.

Over the past week or so we have been slowly rolling out changes to our website. Many of the changes are aimed at making our site more search engine friendly, but a big goal is to provide more information and services to our customers and potential customers.

The entire portfolio section has been changed to make it more visual appealing and easier to navigate. This News section is new, as is the Laminated Wall Maps section (see below). In upcoming weeks we will be adding something really new and exciting for everyone to experience, so stay tuned!

We get often get requests for custom wall maps depicting entire counties or multiple counties, showing all the roads, zip codes, etc. Businesses like these maps laminated so they can mark them up for various purposes like defining territories, plotting customers, and planning delivery routes. Unfortunately it is very cost prohibitive to create these kinds of maps on a one-off basis from scratch, so we have partnered with Market Maps.

Market Maps have been around for years, and have created an automated system that makes it fast, easy, and cost-effective to make one-off maps up to an amazing 9 feet by 12 feet (of course smaller sizes are available). Their automated online order process makes it easy to define the areas and features that you want.

If you are not sure what you need contact us and we can work with you directly to get exactly the map that suits your needs from Market Maps. Just click the Laminated Wall Maps link at the top of this page for more information.

We recently completed a project for the Structural Engineers Association of Colorado (SEAC) to create a map of the average snow load across the state of Colorado. They provided an Excel spreadsheet of 400 sample locations each with the latitude and longitude and average snow load (pounds per square foot). We plotted this data and then interpolated the points into a surface from which we could create contour lines. The map was printed at 24″ x 36″ and we were very pleased with the results.

If you would like more information about obtaining a copy of the map, please contact SEAC directly.

Click the Read On link to see an interactive version of the map.

I have decided to jump on the Web 2.0 band wagon and add a blog to my site. I will be posting information about new projects, published works, and interesting articles. You can also find lots more general content about cartographers and cartography at CartoTalk.com and CartoBlog.com, two community sites that I have created. I am proud to say that CartoTalk is the biggest community site for cartographers worldwide. I it’s 4 years of existence it has become a tremendous resource for professional and beginner cartographers alike.

Enjoy!