2024

I had all of this hope and optimism about a store that centered living cartographers, creative makers and talented people who were still alive and paying rent. None of that antique-scavenging vintage stuff torn out of old books from estate sales. Maps that are fresh and colorful and represented people! In the first four months of my tenure I brought in some new stock. I had a few books I was a fan of. I made some relationships with artists who were making contemporary maps and I was eager to see how the public would like my new offerings. In short, they didn’t.

My audience wasn’t materializing. People wanted old maps and no one seemed interested in what I wanted to show them. Even after several months of hard work, it seems that nothing had changed. Seventy years of momentum was too great to overcome. A new space popped up in The Mill where I rent from and it hurt pretty badly that the thought of relocating fifty feet didn’t seem worth the effort just to sell the same old same old. I was looking for a single sign that there was interest in what I was doing. And it didn’t come. I was pretty heartbroken. I needed a logo for some business cards and I didn’t have the confidence of my own vision so I made this one myself basing it off of the title page of a 19th century atlas of Providence that I saw at the State Archives. If folks wanted ‘classic,’ I’d have to learn how to deliver it.

2025

Then things started picking up. I caught some attention printing maps for the Decolonial Atlas in October 2024 and I went viral on Bluesky a couple months later. That turned into articles in the Valley Breeze, the Public’s Radio and Boston Globe. Folks were finding out about who I am and what I’ve been trying to do. Instead of accidentally stumbling in on their way to the plant store next door, more of my customers knew who I was! And they were coming just to see my store! It took a while but I started to find my footing and connect with my audience. I wanted another crack at that logo. I had some money from the Christmas season and I wanted to hire an artist, someone whose work I really admired, to help me capture the spirit I had always had but was too scared to commit to. I wanted something that was fun, creative, approachable, kid-friendly and colorful.

Dylan Moriarty is an infographic designer and cartographer at the Washington Post and he’s been a long-time contributor to all kinds of online map projects. His vector-outline “Moriary Hand” is a very cool data set that I’ve used in my own work. Getting to hire him to make me something was a bit of a dream come true.

We talked a bit about what my values and goals. In geography classes, peeling an orange is often used to demonstrate how a planet's surface can never be flattened onto a page without loss or distortion. All maps are wrong. But this also gives us magnificent permission to make beautiful maps that are also a bit wrong and a bit right too. Dylan took this idea and made this bright orange peeling globe with jaunty, classic-inspired lettering. I think it does just the thing.

Thanks Dylan. And if you have ever stopped by The Map Center or bought something online, thanks to you too.