Daniel Huffman
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pinakographos.bsky.social
Daniel Huffman
@pinakographos.bsky.social
1.5K followers 77 following 680 posts
An arboreal, poly, gender non-participant mapmaker.
• Portfolio & tutorials: somethingaboutmaps.com.
• Prints: https://somethingaboutmaps.com/Storefront
• You can support my art & teaching at http://patreon.com/pinakographos.
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pinakographos.bsky.social
Do you like #maps? The Independent Map Artists (mapartists.org) has hit a big milestone and now has 50(!) members, all interested in helping with your holiday shopping. Hundreds of maps & mappy goods, straight from small businesses.

Connecting creators & customers is hard; please consider sharing.
An oblique view of a couple of dozen thumbnail images of map products. An oblique view of a couple of dozen thumbnail images of map products. A contact sheet showing 144 thumbnail images from the mapartists.org website.
November 22, 2025 at 6:15 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
There's a computer game, Transport Tycoon Deluxe (I play the open-source clone of it, OpenTTD), which creates maps for you to set up train networks. Its randomly-generated English names are great.
November 21, 2025 at 7:26 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
Apparently it had its own custom projection! As far as I can tell, the Dudley Projection also faded into obscurity, as I find no other reference to it.
A page from the manual showing the Dudley projection, described as taking "advantage of the computer power available in today's PCs." It was developed for the program. It's an interrupted, multilobate projection.
November 20, 2025 at 10:26 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
Reminiscing. When I started making maps as a hobby ca. 2005, I used Map Maker Gratis, a program that faded away long ago. Luckily the Internet Archive remembers (web.archive.org/web/20060424...). Alas, I can't find the maps I made with it, except one. I am still proud of figuring out how to make it.
A screenshot of a page from the mapmaker.com website in 2006. It describes the Map Maker Gratis program and its features. A page from the Map Maker manual, describing how to query data. It shows images of the program interface, including a dialog box and the main Map Maker interface with some data loaded in. A map of the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries, along with cities on those rivers. It's a very clunky map, but I am very proud of it.
November 20, 2025 at 10:22 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
This cat will be improving her data visualization skills in no time.
An adult cat, a silver spotted tabby, sniffs at the corner of a book. The book is "Info We Trust" by RJ Andrews.
November 20, 2025 at 4:30 AM
pinakographos.bsky.social
I am also celebrating by finally organizing my #cyanotype misprints and having another one of my irregularly-scheduled "pay what you want" sales. Please consider giving a home to one of these less-than-perfect hand-printed pieces. Some have scorch marks!

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
A detail image of two cyanotype maps of Lebanon. One is darker than the other and has some browning on the bottom. An image of a cyanotype of the Seven Summits. Some of the text is dark and blurred and difficult to read.
November 18, 2025 at 9:18 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
I just obtained a (red!) shipping label printer. To celebrate & give me a reason to actually use it, I am discounting "Landforms of Michigan" by 25% for the next week (now only $18.77).

somethingaboutmaps.bigcartel.com/product/the-...

Take a tour: somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2021/12/06/l...
A photo of a small red label printer, sitting on a faux-wood floor. A detailed image of a print of Landforms of Michigan, showing the northern end of Lake Michigan. An image of the whole Landforms of Michigan map, showing in various green tones, with shaded relief, the landforms and landcover of the state.
November 18, 2025 at 9:14 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
Spent a bit of time this evening perusing one of my favorites: The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Fell in love with it at the campus library in college, and was lucky enough to find (and afford) a banged-up copy soon after graduation.
A photograph of a page from the atlas. It shows an area center on Amphipopolis. Hypsometric tinting is used to show elevations. Towns, roads, and other common reference map features are shown.
November 18, 2025 at 5:47 AM
pinakographos.bsky.social
As a general reminder: if you see an item in my portfolio (somethingaboutmaps.com/Client-Work), and you want to know more about how I made it, I can usually send my Illustrator/Photoshop files to you for dissection.
November 13, 2025 at 10:31 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
It's been a long journey (>1 year since I began), but there's finallt a public release of the oblique hachures method. With many thanks to @southarrowmaps.co.nz, who significantly refined the methodology from what I began with.

Writeup (w/ a link to the script): docs.google.com/document/d/1...
An image of three mountains (Mt Shasta, Mt Adams, Mt Rainier), showing each mountain in an elevation view (i.e. seen from the front). Each mountain is illustrated by means of sketch lines. An image of Aoraki, seen from the ground level. It is illustrated with sketch lines in black and white.
November 1, 2025 at 2:24 AM
pinakographos.bsky.social
Average person: “So how do you actually make maps?”

Me:
October 24, 2025 at 5:13 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
There are many places called "Round Island" in the US & Canada. Several years ago, I made a fun poster of them.

Most of them aren't very round.

Prints & free PDF download: somethingaboutmaps.com/Round-Islands
An image of a poster design titled "Round Islands and Iles Rondes of the United States and Canada." It is white, with outlined shapes of various islands of different sizes. A detail image of the poster showing a few islands. Each one is labeled with its coordinates and the state/province it is in.
October 21, 2025 at 7:18 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
The new ones have arrived!
October 14, 2025 at 11:30 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
My first ever paper casting. I'm making a raised-relief globe out of the data for my Chiron map. I've got a 3D printed mold of one hemisphere that I did a casting into (just a test one; full coverage is next). After that I'm hoping to print out/glue on some gores to form the color surface.
A portion of a paper casting, in the shape of a hemisphere with some bumps on it. A grey plastic mold used for casting the paper. It's bowl-shaped, and has various indentations in it representing terrain.
October 9, 2025 at 8:48 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
This is a coaster at my brother's house. I'm planning to replace it with a new one that has fewer major inaccuracies.
A coaster showing a map of the Great Lakes. There are several major inaccuracies in how the lake boundaries are drawn, along with very unclear and inconsistent labeling.
September 29, 2025 at 4:21 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
It was near sunset, but after many, many years, I finally got to revisit one of the most important trees of my life, a northern red oak on the Kalamazoo College campus.
A northern red oak on a campus lawn. Dimly lit.
September 28, 2025 at 1:37 AM
pinakographos.bsky.social
After months, I finally remembered to put this print on my store page, so that people know where to look if they want a charmingly distressing world map.

somethingaboutmaps.com/Storefront

And if you'll be at #NACIS2025 in Louisville, you can see it in person and deface it with dry erase markers.
September 25, 2025 at 8:58 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
The Alliance of Freelance Cartographers has a new website! Thanks to @alyolli.bsky.social for getting it off the ground. It hosts past editions of the survey, as well as other resources. www.freelancemaps.org/home
A screenshot of the AFC website
September 23, 2025 at 8:28 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
To get the peaks close together for a nice group photo, I took individual DEMs and then kicked them out to Photoshop so that I could feather them together, before imaging them in Blender.
Screenshow of a monochrome representation of a DEM. There are three peaks seen in it, very close together.
September 23, 2025 at 7:41 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
New poster! Hachure illustrations of the highest Cascade Range volcanoes. This one took a lot of experimentation to get the layout right. If you or someone you know loves this area, check it out. www.etsy.com/listing/4373...
A black and white illustration titled "Cascade Range Volcanoes," showing a 3 by 3 layout of the nine tallest peaks in the range. The art is done in a hachure sketch style. A detail image of the illustration of Mount Rainier A detail image from the poster of Mounts Hood and Jefferson.
September 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
One of my fosters has a favorite toy and reminds me when it’s time to play with it.
September 23, 2025 at 7:12 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
The Great Oak, the tallest tree I have ever gotten to enjoy climbing, was recently trimmed.

I had hoped to climb it again next month. Alas, it is now forever out of my reach.

I documented one of my prior climbs: dryad.substack.com/p/9-the-grea...
A bur oak, with all of its lowest branches trimmed off.
September 21, 2025 at 10:50 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
#SilentSunday #Trees #Wisconsin
A view of some Wisconsin parkland, with a variety of trees visible, and some grassland. The viewpoint is from several meters above ground.
September 21, 2025 at 9:07 PM
pinakographos.bsky.social
Loosely inspired by an (unused) idea I had in 2017 for diagrammatic sketches of bird lifecycle data when I was working on an atlas (somethingaboutmaps.com/Ecological-A...). Most of the maps covered the same area & showed similar data, so I mocked up a idea for thumbnail sketches.
A highly simplified diagram showing the Bering Strait and the land around it. Simply color rectangles mark out areas where birds breed, molt, winter, etc. A few cities are marked. A screenshot of a map showing the area around the Bering Strait. Various color polygons mark where birds winter, breed, molt, etc.
September 20, 2025 at 5:07 AM
pinakographos.bsky.social
A map/diagram design doodle this evening. Historical snapshots of polities around the Black Sea, with extents taken from www.worldhistorymaps.info.
A diagram showing the the Black Sea abstracted as a rounded rectangle. The fill is blue. Around the perimeter are colored lines labeled with the names of various political entities. The diagram is shown six times, each showing a different year from 400 BCE to 1 AD, and different polities shown each time.
September 20, 2025 at 5:07 AM