Maps and poster maps have always been popular. There are many examples of such items being collector items and / or works of art. With todays sophisticated production means, the door is open for a much wider array of this popular wall hanging.
Have you ever seen the pleasure and amazement on the face of a small child when he or she is shown their first map or atlas? I know my three children, when first getting interested in books, loved browsing through the many atlases that we owned. To be able to visit any place on the planet with just a turn of the page was truly fascinating to them. I think this experience with maps and atlases turned them into the world travelers they are today.
Children of today certainly miss out on that experience with the dominance of GPS’s, computers, I-Phones, Kindles and all the other high-tech gadgets that exist today and that are slowly replacing books. Nothing electronically today however, can compare to spending an hour or two with a well laid out atlas. And with the GPS becoming more and more common, displacing the old fold up (or fold out) car map, a certain amount of exploring fun is missing from our lives.
How great is it to get lost in some strange city or town, open the glove box, pull out the map, lay it on the hood of your car, fighting the wind , working your way painfully from where you are to where you want to be and then attempting to fold the map back into its original configuration. Often an impossible last for those persons endowed with two left thumbs. A lot of the time, the map ended up back in the glovebox a tangled, crumpled mess, waiting for the next victim.
However, maps and posters depicting places you have visited or a place you live in are always a conversation piece. Many people like to look at a framed map or a poster depicting a city, a town or a place they have been and identify a place they have stayed or the home of a friend or some well known landmark. A friend of mine has a poster map of the area of Canada he lives, under a glass on the counter of his business. About two out of three people will view the map with interest and spend a few minutes identifying where they live. Try and do that with a GPS.
Maps and poster maps are colorful, educational, sometimes works of art and are great for wall hangings. Maps are a means for conveying geographic information and are a universal medium for communication. Old maps provide much information about what was known in times past, as well as the philosophy and cultural basis of the map, which were often much different from modern cartography. Maps are one means by which scientists distribute their ideas and pass them on to future generations. Today’s maps, in a poster style, can be produced in 3D (see http://www.earthplaces.ca/) making them artistically pleasing as opposed to the old style of 2D or flat maps.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Trigg owns a number of businesses in Vancouver, British Columbia including http://www.earthplaces.ca/. He has written several books including a self help book on financing and several children's books.
