Awards
This map is intended to capture the captivating beauty and culture of Iceland through terrain and cartographic design. I thought to myself at the beginning of the project that my goal was to create something that I would be proud to hang on my wall, a map with a heavy weight towards aesthetics. I stumbled upon countless references to Iceland while browsing photography related media and was deeply drawn to the photographs and stories capture by those who visited. Of them, many agree that there is a unique charm to the island that is hard to find anywhere else.
As my final project for my intro cartography class, this project was my most challenging project to date. It was actually only my 5th map I had ever designed (the other 4 being previous labs for the same class). I had no prior experience creating shaded relief but I was prepared to learn from the ground up. I got some help from cart lab folks, especially the cartographer in residence, Daniel Huffman, who basically wrote the handbook for created blender relief. Typography was equally as challenenging and finding ways to keep text legible over the contrasty basemap was a real challenge, and ensuring all of the icelandic spellings were accurate was especially important. The friendly Icelanders on the Iceland reddit page were extremely helpful, and the feedback of friends, aquiantances, and professionals in the field has helped me develop this map a lot since its first drafts.