Evan Applegate (@youwillmakemaps) / X

Evan Applegate

6,896 posts

Evan Applegate

@youwillmakemaps

Vocational cartographer, design @durinmining • evanapplegate.com • The best maps lie ahead, and you’re going to make them

Los Angeles, CA

gallery.evanapplegate.com

Joined February 2024

Pinned
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
May 16, 2025
The Best Maps Lie Ahead I want my favorite material culture to live. I want people in 2130 to cherish a map made in 2030. I want to see another Turgot-level map produced before I die (pic related). In 1910 you could buy a 5-cent rail route pamphlet that looks better than nearly
GIF
48K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Sep 28, 2025
Sodium…….
emily north
@north0fnorth
Jul 1, 2025
thinking about how cool the chicago street grid looks at night. near-perfect order, just like a sheet of graph paper
442K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Sep 12, 2025
Time to scroll around the most beautiful map ever made: the 1739 "Plan de Turgot," commissioned by the chief merchant of Paris. Every mark was originally engraved into brass plates and the detail is insane, like examining an 8x10 ft. banknote.
00:00
148K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Oct 24, 2025
Solid Terrain Modeling (shuttered in 2023) sold huge 3D maps; the map was printed using terrain-following inkjet print heads that glided over the CNC'd foam landscape, which looks nuts
00:00
291K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Oct 25, 2025
Day 2,368 of not shutting up about amber glowing maps (I started in 2019)
00:18
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Oct 24, 2025
24x36" backlit map of the San Gabriel Mountains above Altadena; stitched together 12x 1:24k USFS topos (their topos only cover NFs but they're way better than contemporary USGS quads)
77K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Jul 9, 2025
WWII editorial maps for Time Magazine by R.M. Chapin
149K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Jun 16, 2025
Most mapmaker hours are spent labeling; a good map has "no collisions, no elisions" The computer can roughly place your text, but following rivers and stretching type out from the coastline is all manual; hope you like dragging bezier handles in Illustrator
00:00
198K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Jun 8, 2025
Another @usgraphics moment: Rolodex-punched business cards from the 50s-60s
74K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
May 17, 2025
Just learned about the Henry Dreyfuss Associates Humanscale anthropometric-ergonomic manuals, having a saturday morning @usgraphics moment
60K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Nov 3, 2025
Sometimes you gotta rotate it
Pat Carino (d/b/a Acquisizioni)
@PatCarino
Oct 30, 2025
I love this angle of it.
1.6M
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Oct 25, 2025
Potential @usgraphics moment, that patch looks so good
23K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Jun 8, 2025
Nuclear reactor cutaways by Nuclear Engineering International, collected by the University of New Mexico Library
mattparlmer 🪐 🌷
@mattparlmer
Jun 8, 2025
Mentally this is where I’m at
30K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Sep 15, 2025
My career goal is to create 100 cartographers who free lance map like this:
1000yearhouse
@1000yearhouse
Sep 15, 2025
My career goal is to create a 100 masons who free lance mass wall vernacular like this:
29K
Evan Applegate
@youwillmakemaps
Jun 9, 2025
Japanese illustrator Tadashi Ishihara created hyper-detailed bird’s-eye maps with every rooftop and tree; no generalization, no problem. He drew magnificent views of Nara, Kyoto, Osaka, Ashiya, Asuka and Manhattan.
37K