Archive for March 2009
‘Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire’ by Iain Sinclair
Commissioned by Nathan Burton at Penguin Books, Hand Made Maps Ltd have produced the illustrated map artwork for the dust-jacket of ‘Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire’ by Iain Sinclair.
The concept, designed by Nathan Burton was to have a jacket that folded out to become a map of the Hackney Empire (sic) with Victoria Park as a nearby island.
The artwork was produced mainly in Adobe Illustrator, then printed out and to give the lines a distressed quality the artwork was reduced in photocopy by 25% and then these copies were enlarged by 400%. Illustrations were hand-drawn and added in Photoshop. Another device to make the map look as if from an earlier age of lithographic printing was the use of flat colour, with some of the printings out of register.
‘Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire’ is published by Hamish Hamilton
Sailing Yacht Eos
Launched in 2006, S.Y.Eos, the largest sailing ship in the world (305 ft), contains a 14ft world map mural supplied by Hand Made Maps Ltd. The commission was handled by Tom Ackerman a freelance New York Art Director, employed by Barry Diller and Diana von Furstenburg, the owners of the Eos.
The brief for the mural was quite open, with the request that images representing cultures around the world were not to be clichés but by imaginative and unpredictable subject matter. The other request was that is would have as much information as possible. The map was initially created as a water-colour of the world’s seas (photo above). This was then scanned by an over-head scanner and through various digital processes in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator a large file was produced for the mural to be printed in the USA. This was then mounted and sent to Germany where the yacht’s builders Lürrsen Yachts installed the mural.