MAPS

Many years ago before I became an illustrator but after I moved to the UK I saw work by the incredibly talented Rob Hain who paints maps of different cities. His maps are really simple in terms of layout and they are really beautiful and I’ve wanted to create my own maps but with my own style.

It’s taken a few years, some training and lots of research but also the impetus to create one of these. Earlier in 2015 I was hired to create a series of postcard illustrations for a Taiwanese souvenir company and one of the things I was asked to do was create an illustrated map of Taiwan.

Taiwan Fruit Map

The brief for the first map was to draw a fruit to represent each major city and to combine these into the one map. Taiwan is known as “The Kingdom of Fruits” because it’s a tropical country and thus has an awfully large amount of delicious tropical fruits. Call me strange but fruits from hot countries always taste a lot better than the equivalent fruits from cold countries.

Below is first of all the full Taiwan fruit map illustration and beneath that are some detailed sections from the map.

Taiwan Street Food Map

The second map I created for the same Taiwanese souvenir company was also of Taiwan but this time all about street food in Taiwan. For those who don’t know much or anything about Taiwan, Taiwan is really famous for it’s night markets. Take for example Taipei, the city is divided into major disctricts; Shilin, Ximending etc, and each has it’s own night market. Some are better than others but you can find all kinds of really delicious foods at these markets and each city (by and large) has it’s own famous street food.

So here is my interpretation of street foods in Taiwan. I’m more familiar with cities like Taipei, Taiping and Kaoshiung so for other cities I had to do more research but this was a lot of fun.

Scotland Food Maps

To date I’ve created four map illustrations, the first two focusing on Taiwan, and the other two focusing on what is now my home country Scotland. The first food map is a personal project and the second a paid project. The Scotland food maps were awesome to work on as it’s super interesting to compare the foods from the two countries. The food we eat in both countries is so so different, even down to the fruits and vegetables and while my heart will always lie with Taiwanese cooking there are some really damn delicious things to eat in Scotland. Scotland for example has some really amazing seafood, a lot of really delicious cheeses and even some great desserts. There are of course also dishes like “haggis” and “neeps and tatties” to name just two.

The first map below is the one I created for myself and the second map is the one that I was paid for and was brought about by creating the first map. I’ve included some detail shots of the second map.