The Alps are the ultimate subject for a panoramic map. This archetypal landscape of village church steeples, manicured valleys, sparkling lakes, and gauzy summits has inspired its very own unique and much-loved brand of painterly cartography. So when it came time to tackle this classic subject matter, I found myself taking a few more stylistic cues than usual from old-world cartographic artists like Berann, Bieder, and Koller.
Die Alpen by Heinrich Berann
The hand-painted panoramas that inspired this map typically feature bold, outsized landforms and a sunny, nearly primary color palette. They are old-fashioned landscapes, idealized and romanticized in the best sense, with a naïve sort of beauty seldom captured by satellite imagery alone. So although this map is built from modern data sources, its details have been curated, stylized, and above all simplified to evoke the sensibilities of an earlier time.
Panoramic Map of the Alps by Eric Knight
Making a complex mountain landscape appear familiar and harmonious is not a simple task, especially when the medium is not paint but instead modern geodata with all of its accuracy and excess. Terrain and land cover must be generalized, yes, but the greater issues are more subjective and not so easily quantified. I try to develop compositions that work at multiple scales, showcasing an entire region while drawing the viewer in close to explore little scenes, using text and simple shapes to lead the eye from one place to the next. Clutter is reduced, but the perception of detail remains, and gradients of color, value and contrast help create and illusion of scale that is both vast and comprehensive yet intimate and inviting.
Given this subjective design process, one might not expect this panorama to have morphed into a thematic map, of all things, describing loss of snow cover in the Alps for National Geographic magazine. To me, the fusion of panoramic map design and aesthetics with real world data and context is full of intriguing possibilities, and shows how design principles developed by landscape artists of the past have had lasting significance in the way we see the world.
Alpine Melt © 2022 by National Geographic Partners
(Excerpted from the NACIS Atlas of Design, Volume 6)