Scott Reinhard is a New York-based graphic designer with a deep appreciation for the visual appeal of maps. Old maps, especially. And landforms too. He’s merged that appreciation with his professional expertise with rendering color and light to produce these truly stunning 2D maps that you’d swear were 3D. You can practically feel the ridgelines and valleys, the rolling hills, even the craters of the moon. Reinhard uses topography data from the USGS to accurately depict the elevation changes masterfully rendered in 2D in his maps. Part of the function of the maps is to tell a kind of geological story of a place.
The results are breathtaking.
Yellowstone National Park
“I am from Indiana, which always felt so flat and boring,” he said in an interview with Colossal. “When I began rendering the elevation data for the state, the story of the land emerged. The glaciers that receded across the northern half of the state after the last ice age scraped and gouged and shaped the land in a way that is spectacularly clear.”
You can buy high-quality prints of these extraordinary maps too, on Reinhard’s website. He’s covered entire states, specific geologic features, a section of the moon, even a crater on Mars.
Mount St. Helens
Glacier National Park
California
Grand Tetons
Yosemite National Park
Southern California
Australia
Crater Lake
All images courtesy of Scott Reinhard. You can follow him on Instagram for more map goodness.
Awesome! The process is so simple and effective, it makes me wonder why I haven’t really seen it before. Some topos do have shading, but the emphasis on terrain, in this case, is very effective. (For example the detail of the shading that bleeds over the edge of the actual chart.) I feel like elevation is one of the trickiest elements to render on a flat surface, and usually gets relegated to other information.
-Steve, I imagine that Obi Kaufman’s work, The California FIeld Atlas, is on your radar. If not have a look, you will no doubt appreciate it.
We profiled Obi in print a few issues ago. I spent some time hiking with him and chatting about his work. He has a new book out soon, which we’ll likely cover on the website.
Justin, “the State Of Water”. Very cool, thanks for the reply.
Ooooooh, this post is going to lead to some spending,
Those look gorgeous. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who can spend serious time poring over a nice map. Just have to figure out which one(s) to get.