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Evan Applegate

@youwillmakemaps • 9,276 subscribers

Vocational cartographer, design @durinmining • https://t.co/X5SvX8aR3h • The best maps lie ahead, and you’re going to make them

Shorts

This map by Danish recreation mapmaker Calazo is nuts, an enormous handmade QGIS + MAPublisher output It’s actually FOUR discrete maps, one for each zoom level, the most-detailed is a giant 1:250k-scale topo covering Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. A symphony in Leaflet...

This map by Danish recreation mapmaker Calazo is nuts, an enormous handmade QGIS + MAPublisher output It’s actually FOUR discrete maps, one for each zoom level, the most-detailed is a giant 1:250k-scale topo covering Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. A symphony in Leaflet...

100,983 views

Barely 0.001% greebles, wow...in the far off year of 2026 your maps better be 100% handmade or harness insane computer-scale

Barely 0.001% greebles, wow...in the far off year of 2026 your maps better be 100% handmade or harness insane computer-scale

197,570 views

Solid Terrain Modeling (shuttered in 2023) sold huge 3D maps; the map was printed using terrain-following inkjet print heads that glided over the CNC'd foam landscape, which looks nuts

Solid Terrain Modeling (shuttered in 2023) sold huge 3D maps; the map was printed using terrain-following inkjet print heads that glided over the CNC'd foam landscape, which looks nuts

291,217 views

The National Library of Scotland tiled and georeferenced hundreds of late 1890s Ordnance Survey maps; in urban areas they showed major building interiors, here's Westminster Abbey

The National Library of Scotland tiled and georeferenced hundreds of late 1890s Ordnance Survey maps; in urban areas they showed major building interiors, here's Westminster Abbey

19,162 views

Nobody makes Mapbox GL JS sing like Jonni Walker: 3D map of Fort Valley, VA

Nobody makes Mapbox GL JS sing like Jonni Walker: 3D map of Fort Valley, VA

33,136 views

"Lightning event 19A-1" atop Google Earth by Indiana University's Advanced Visualization Lab; the map adds a nice scale "...lightning event from April 2019 as detected by the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands. Includes three separate flashes in less than 2 seconds."

"Lightning event 19A-1" atop Google Earth by Indiana University's Advanced Visualization Lab; the map adds a nice scale "...lightning event from April 2019 as detected by the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands. Includes three separate flashes in less than 2 seconds."

15,448 views

3DTilesRendererJS orthographic view + Google 3D Tiles

3DTilesRendererJS orthographic view + Google 3D Tiles

13,126 views

Jonni Walker’s Bernese Alps, another Mapbox GL JS stunner, a pleasure to watch his layers load That lighting and tree texture.....

Jonni Walker’s Bernese Alps, another Mapbox GL JS stunner, a pleasure to watch his layers load That lighting and tree texture.....

11,500 views

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Sweden’s AirForestry makes a 20 ft.-wide 6-prop electric drone that drops a branch-shearing tool on a tree, grips the trunk, and whisks it away I think the tree it grabbed here is like 9" DBH?
0:41
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Sweden’s AirForestry makes a 20 ft.-wide 6-prop electric drone that drops a branch-shearing tool on a tree, grips the trunk, and whisks it away I think the tree it grabbed here is like 9" DBH?

Evan Applegate

775,666 views • 15 days ago

"I need to grab weather radar data via API, generalize it into fake clouds, place them on a mapbox map, add shadows and an offset so it looks like they're floating above the surface" GPT 5.1 Codex: "That will take months" Gemini 3 Pro: "Sure here you go" ??? I don't get LLMs
0:30
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"I need to grab weather radar data via API, generalize it into fake clouds, place them on a mapbox map, add shadows and an offset so it looks like they're floating above the surface" GPT 5.1 Codex: "That will take months" Gemini 3 Pro: "Sure here you go" ??? I don't get LLMs

Evan Applegate

236,328 views • 6 months ago

"Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" had the best burning-amber UIs
1:00
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"Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" had the best burning-amber UIs

Evan Applegate

81,605 views • 2 months ago

Most mapmaker hours are spent labeling; a good map has "no collisions, no elisions" The computer can roughly place your text, but following rivers and stretching type out from the coastline is all manual; hope you like dragging bezier handles in Illustrator
1:03
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Most mapmaker hours are spent labeling; a good map has "no collisions, no elisions" The computer can roughly place your text, but following rivers and stretching type out from the coastline is all manual; hope you like dragging bezier handles in Illustrator

Evan Applegate

198,089 views • 11 months ago

Time to scroll around the most beautiful map ever made: the 1739 "Plan de Turgot," commissioned by the chief merchant of Paris. Every mark was originally engraved into brass plates and the detail is insane, like examining an 8x10 ft. banknote.
0:32
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Time to scroll around the most beautiful map ever made: the 1739 "Plan de Turgot," commissioned by the chief merchant of Paris. Every mark was originally engraved into brass plates and the detail is insane, like examining an 8x10 ft. banknote.

Evan Applegate

147,507 views • 8 months ago

It is civilization-grade low hanging fruit to make anything you can more beautiful
0:43
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It is civilization-grade low hanging fruit to make anything you can more beautiful

Evan Applegate

32,892 views • 2 months ago

Anyone else keep a trash heap Illustrator file of map patterns and olde timey cartographic doodads? Well now it's your beloved trash heap
0:30
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Anyone else keep a trash heap Illustrator file of map patterns and olde timey cartographic doodads? Well now it's your beloved trash heap

Evan Applegate

46,678 views • 4 months ago

LLMs let me swing at my preferred maximalist web design: not gradients and on-scroll animations, but encrusting the page with little SVGs and PNGs The web needs more illuminated initial caps
0:23
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LLMs let me swing at my preferred maximalist web design: not gradients and on-scroll animations, but encrusting the page with little SVGs and PNGs The web needs more illuminated initial caps

Evan Applegate

32,515 views • 3 months ago

Tom Patterson is not only one of the best living cartographers, but also the most generous; he gives away his design files. Download the Illustrator .AI and see how a master mapmaker does it (tip: Layers > Panel Options > untick "Show Layers Only")
0:31
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Tom Patterson is not only one of the best living cartographers, but also the most generous; he gives away his design files. Download the Illustrator .AI and see how a master mapmaker does it (tip: Layers > Panel Options > untick "Show Layers Only")

Evan Applegate

18,230 views • 1 year ago

Tom Patterson Tom Patterson is right: this is the golden age of cartography. We have infinite data, tools that let you filter terabytes on someone else's computer, and language models to format your queries. I used all that to make a quick retro poster of the Lower 48, something like a 1987 USGS giveaway you’d see on a classroom wall: 1) Google Earth Engine to filter 2013-2024 Landsat 8 scenes, filtered out clouds + cloud-shadows using the "QA_Pixel" band. You get some striping but for this purpose it looks fine. 2) Exported 4x composite images at 1500m resolution, one for each season: autumn, winter, spring and summer 3) Used Eduard to grab a ~300m Mapzen DEM over the continental U.S., cranked up the generalization 4) Match up projections and resolutions in GDAL (went with EPSG:5070, CONUS Albers) 5) Stacked everything in Photoshop, to get that retro look my layers were ordered thus: Levels adjustment layer Imagery layer: 60% opacity, color burn Shaded relief layer underneath 6) Export each to it’s own TIFF 7) Place an Albers raster in a MAPublisher layout, use the MAP View to add my country-outline clipping mask and state boundaries 8) Dupe the MAP Views, replace the geoTIFF with my photoshop output 9) Design work: Franklin Gothic type, added small strokes to the text and blurred the final output a bit to make it look old
0:25
youwillmakemaps's profile picture

Tom Patterson Tom Patterson is right: this is the golden age of cartography. We have infinite data, tools that let you filter terabytes on someone else's computer, and language models to format your queries. I used all that to make a quick retro poster of the Lower 48, something like a 1987 USGS giveaway you’d see on a classroom wall: 1) Google Earth Engine to filter 2013-2024 Landsat 8 scenes, filtered out clouds + cloud-shadows using the "QA_Pixel" band. You get some striping but for this purpose it looks fine. 2) Exported 4x composite images at 1500m resolution, one for each season: autumn, winter, spring and summer 3) Used Eduard to grab a ~300m Mapzen DEM over the continental U.S., cranked up the generalization 4) Match up projections and resolutions in GDAL (went with EPSG:5070, CONUS Albers) 5) Stacked everything in Photoshop, to get that retro look my layers were ordered thus: Levels adjustment layer Imagery layer: 60% opacity, color burn Shaded relief layer underneath 6) Export each to it’s own TIFF 7) Place an Albers raster in a MAPublisher layout, use the MAP View to add my country-outline clipping mask and state boundaries 8) Dupe the MAP Views, replace the geoTIFF with my photoshop output 9) Design work: Franklin Gothic type, added small strokes to the text and blurred the final output a bit to make it look old

Evan Applegate

11,934 views • 1 year ago

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