Making Maps: DIY Cartography

Q: How were all the example maps in Making Maps created?

A: The primary software I used to create Making Maps was Freehand on a Mac. I learned Illustrator and Freehand in versions 1.0 back in the day while working at the Cartographic Lab at UW Madison. I have always liked Freehand better than Illustrator, despite extensive work with both software packages. Many of the map projections in the book were created in GeoCart, and I used ArcGIS to create a few dozen maps. All were imported into Freehand and redesigned.

The entire book layout and design was done with Freehand – somewhat unconventional. Because the book design and layout I wanted was unusual, I decided to “mock it up” in Freehand, assuming the whole book would be reworked by a professional book designer, sorta following my ideas. In the end, this never happened, my “mock up” is what became the final book layout and design. I think I need to take a book design course, and learn more about typography (I think the typeface and text in the book is one of its weaker points) for the 2nd edition. William Meyer (at Guilford Publications) took the Freehand files, chopped them up into single pages (I did two-page layouts, as facing pages almost always were designed to relate to each other) and converted them to PDF (with surprisingly few problems) and sent them off to the printer.