MAPONDO "The Map is the Treasure"
Back in 2013, I was contacted for taking part of a very ambitious project that wanted to change the way people see the maps today. And I'm very glad that I accepted...
"Mapondo was born with the simple, but yet complex idea, of blending art & cartography. Maps nowadays are too perfect, precise and practical, but they are not stimulating our imagination anymore. We are hyperconnected, but yet we don't know very well our planet. If we want to change the world, why not changing first the way we look at it?"
That paragraph perhaps contains one of the most captivating messages I've ever had from a client.
Not only was the message, but the great love for the maps of the people behind MAPONDO really called my attention.
My first time designing a map
I'm no cartographer and I was looking at this with a very skeptic vision; but challenges are way more interesting to me than running away with the "what If...". I have to admit this was a very wonderful and at the same time, a very painful experience as an artist for many reasons.
More than a year of work...so many names, details...so many things that we needed to take care of, to fix, to handle...and specially to be extremely, extremely accurate. And for having an alternative take, we decided to go with 2 versions: the BLACKGOLD, and the CLASSIC.
The maps were created over the "Natural Earth Projection", a derivated projection from the classical Robinson. Natural Earth enforces the spheric shape of the Earth and gives to the map a light sensation of tridimensionality.
I took advantage of that projection and draw a landscape where the Earth was represented iconically by a female lion. The roaring of the lioness moves the water in our planet creating infinite waves of energy, giving the map the dynamism and strength that our planet really has.
"The World is Roaring" not only was a huge and challenging client work. It was a complete experience as a professional, as an artist and as human being. These maps are as exact as a map can be today: rivers, road routes, train routes, main cities, principal cities, mountain peaks...It's needed to say that the Earth has many reasons to roar...?
You can buy the MAPONDO maps I designed online:
Thanks for watching!
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