From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association

by Kris Harzinski

It's a situation we are all acquainted with: planning to visit friends in an unfamiliar part of the city, you draw yourself arudimentary map with detailed directions. In March 2008, graphic designer Kris Harzinski founded the Hand Drawn Map Association in order to collect just such drawings of the everyday. Fascinated by these accidental records of a moment in time, he soon amassed a wide variety of maps, ranging from simple directions to fictional maps, to maps of unusual places, including examples drawn by well-known historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton, and Alexander Calder.

From Here to There celebrates these ephemeral documentsusually forgotten or tossed aside after having served their purposegiving them their due as artifacts representing stories from people's lives around the world. There is the young woman suffering from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis who created maps of the Humira injections on her stomach and thighs to help her remember the sites, and give them time to heal. Or the young boy who imagined a whole country for ants and put it to paper. Lucas from Australia drew an obsessively detailed map of his local traffic island, and a teenage girl contributed a map of her high school locker. Two American tourists got lost in the Bulgarian mountains following the hand drawn map of a local, and Britanny from Denmark drew directions to an animal rights protest in Copenhagen. The maps featured in From Here to There are as varied and touching as the stories they tell.

Genres: Maps, Nonfiction, Art, Design, Cartography, Geography, Art Design

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2010

Reviews

[audrey]

While my coal-black little heart normally dislikes art books, I also happen to love maps, and you can find this book at the intersection of those interests: a collection of hand-drawn maps from around the world, along with tiny vignettes giving them some backstory.

My favorite section was "Found Maps", in which people shared the maps they had stumbled across, which had still been hand-drawn by other people. My favorite?

Steffanie's roommate Joel found this map when he was repairing ductwork in his eighty-two-year-old house just outside of Detroit. While working one afternoon, Joel was surprised to find a wallet hidden on top of one of the ducts. The wallet belonged to a high school student who used to live in the house. Inside the wallet, Steffanie and Joel found his photo ID card for Ferndale High School, a pay stub (indicating he made $2.50 per hour), a certificate for a record club, a copy of his birth certificate, and a few other scraps of paper, including this map to a "Big Party!" drawn on a sheet of paper dated June 19, 1978.

There is also a section for "Fictional Maps":

Eleanor created this map to explain a recurring dream to her friends.

and:

Gretchen created these maps in her journal during a road trip from Boston to Montreal. As she passed through New Hampshire, she became inspired by a town named Contoocook and drew two imaginary locations where, apparently, the inhabitants are clothespins.

and whatever is happening here, I assure you it is entirely my jam:

Becky's map provides a glimpse of her daily life. By placing various objects next to one another, she forms a diagram of the connections between architectural elements she encounters on a regular basis. A fragmented view of her reality, the map becomes a fictional journey from Becky's home to the grocery store, as seen through an inventory of the built environment.

My copy has a ton of vibrant green post-it flags with notes from a good friend who captured the book and sent it to me, although your copy will not.

The book is in full color and is glorious.

[Alison]

Disclaimer: One of my maps is included in this book. That said, it's a really cool collection of a huge variety of hand drawn maps by ordinary people. It's a standard sized trade paperback (as opposed to a coffee table book), which I find a little odd for a book that is mostly images, since it's not really the kind of book people are going to throw in a purse or briefcase to read on the bus, but it is a fun book to browse, a la Katharine Harmon's The Map as Art.

[Sarah]

Such a lovely idea, so poorly executed.
I mean, here's a really nice intricate hand-drawn map. So let's print it across two pages of a normal-sized paperback book. That way you'll have great difficulty reading much of anything, but especially the chunk of it in the middle that's going to disappear in to the binding...

Essentially five stars for the concept, dinged substantially for thoughtless presentation.

[Amanda Wood]

I liked this - hand drawn maps (or even just recommendations) being something I love about travelling or even just experiencing new local places. The landmarks people choose are always interesting.

[Erika]

Pages and pages of maps. From the actual and informative ones to fictional ones.
All the pages are in colour, and they are all so beautiful.
I love it.

(Well, I would have loved it more if it had a map of fictional worlds. Like Hogwarts and Narnia and Middle Earth.... oh, you can't because of the copyright? Okay.)

Found: Chronicle Books Daikanyama Tokyo (ClosingSale)

[Debra Ramage]

Too weird even for me.

[10thumbs]

Concept is fun and enjoyable, but runs a bit stale after a bit. Still worth reading over an hour.

I’ve always thought I should draw maps when I read just to orient myself. Maybe I will.

[Liz]

My obsession with graph paper and I feel seen.

[Alyssa Ness]

Interesting to look through. Inspired me to draw a map of my own.

[Dita]

I love drawing and maps, and I do both.
Finding this book in a second hand book store was like wow this is gold.

There is less to read here, but certainly lots of quirky story and maps to ponder upon. It's amazing how people depict the elements of map.
My favorite is of course the artistic map.

My small critic will be the book format. As this is a very visual book, I think it's worth it to be printed in bigger size with a binding that lay flat. So those beautiful two-spread maps can be experienced without the spin problem.

[Wink]

THE ART AND REVELATIONS OF HAND-DRAWN MAPS

Google maps are unsurpassed for convenience and scale. Lost in this modern marvel is the unleashed personality of a hand-drawn map. Not too long ago, in order to get to a friend’s house, or to find a cool restaurant, someone would need to draw you a map on a scrap of paper. That sketched map was an abstraction, a distillation that said almost as much about the drawer as about the location. Each person compresses reality differently. The thickness of a line, the size of lettering, what they ignore vs what they emphasize — all reveal their person, and on paper, this revelation is always a surprise. Besides directions, these charts were sheets of folk art. Recognizing their vanishing beauty, Kris Harzinski began collecting these throw-away hand-drawn maps. He also collected hand-drawn maps of imaginary places. He created a Hand Drawn Map Association, and funneled 200 of the more curious maps into this tome. This is not a coffee table book (although it could have been), but a modest paperback that works as a reminder and inspiration. – Kevin Kelly

From Here to There
by Kris Harzinski
Princeton Architectural Press
2010, 224 pages, 5 x 7.4 x .09
$13 Buy a copy on Amazon

[Zioluc]

Antologia del sito http://www.handmaps.org/ che raccoglie dagli utenti mappe disegnate a mano per gli scopi più diversi: dare indicazioni ma anche ricordare i luoghi dell'infanzia o tracciare i tramonti dalla finestra. A dispetto delle mie alte aspettative, poche sono graficamente interessanti, in compenso alcune sono davvero poetiche.

[Jeff Lewonczyk]

I love the concept here more than the execution - a collection of hand-drawn maps. How can you lose? But the result is spotty - some of the maps really aren't that interesting or unique at all, and the mass-market-sized format means that some of the most interesting ones are printed too small to explore. But there are a few gems in here, and some nice visual inspiration throughout.

[Clare]

Extremely engaging, some of the maps are absolute gems. My favorites were those that created a good narrative.

[Bokoholist]

A true gem, quite unexpected.

[Miss]

Impressed by the artistic and creative of map.

[Helen]

Great book to flick through whilst relaxing with a coffee. Have read it cover to cover many times.

[Mauri]

Kind of 'meh'. I wish the maps were bigger. It did inspire me to draw a few maps though.

[Micha]

No reviews on this yet, so it will probably stick around here for awhile.