Higher Order Aberrations

thedailywhat:

Homemade Map of the Day: After spending some 6,000 hours over the course of two years creating a map of the United States from scratch, 35-year-old cartographer David Imus was awarded “Best in Show” by the Cartography and Geographic Information Society over the likes of National Geographic, the CIA, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

“The Essential Geography of the United States of America” (embiggen) is a 4’ x 3’ labor of love designed and executed by one man working alone out of a farm house in Eugene, Oregon.

“He used a computer (not a pencil and paper), but absolutely nothing was left to computer-assisted happenstance,” says Slate’s Seth Stevenson. “Imus spent eons tweaking label positions. Slaving over font types, kerning, letter thicknesses. Scrutinizing levels of blackness. It’s the kind of personal cartographic touch you might only find these days on the hand-illustrated ski-trail maps available at posh mountain resorts.”

Learn more about what makes Imus’s map so special here. Also, you can purchase your very own print of  “The Essential Geography of the United States of America” on his personal site for only $12.95.

[slate / visualnews.]

Amazing map.