Mapplications

Base Layers (or How this Blog Came To Be)

Welcome to the Alaska Mapplications website!

So often, Alaska is an afterthought for the average U.S. cartographer, relegated to a box in the map marginalia (nobody puts Alaska in a corner!). Alternatively, when cartographers from Outside do focus on Alaska, their lack of local knowledge is glaringly obvious (or perhaps, to be more fair, it is obvious which outdated maps they used as a reference).

Outside Cartographers getting “Scoop“ed

With this blog, my goal is to unbox Seward’s icebox and make maps with insights from over 20 years of exploring various corners of the state.

Here’s a breakdown of how I expect the site to look:

The Portfolio section showcases maps and imagery I’ve generated that are in the final format, while the blog posts include my own working content and small projects, or sharing projects of others who have inspired me. In more recent years, my inspiration for Cartography has come from:

  • Tom Patterson, a former fellow NPS employee who had a hand in creating the now universally recognized NPS brochures maps. He outlines his methods on his own blogs, which introduced me to the works of Imhoff and Berann.
  • Kenneth Field, who now works for Esri, but maintains his own cartography blog. I first came across him when he curated a year of map design on the ICA Commission on Map Design.
  • John Nelson, an Esri employee, who explores the possibilities of ArcGIS Pro both on the Esri blog as well as under his own blog. Less theory, more fusion – he encourages people to steal his ideas, so you may see me mimicking his styles. (John and Kenneth team up to teach the Esri Cartography MOOC).
  • Warren Davison, Daniel Huffman, and Andy Woodruff. I get the impression these guys all hang out together at some mid-West mapping conference and geek out. Their work definitely inspires me to hone my cartographic craft beyond vectors and rasters.
  • Sarah Bell and Jacob Wasilkowski, two more Esri employees who also like to map on their free time. They make me feel like less of a loser for spending my weekends mapping.
  • Aileen Buckley, whose posts usually comprised the now defunct Esri Ask a Cartographer site.
  • Joshua Steven, a NASA Earth data viz guy, who shares his personal work on his blog.

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