In that sense, the coronavirus crisis hasn’t had too big an effect on me, as I work from home anyway. Making maps doesn’t feel like work, it’s just fun – I can happily spend 12 hours a day on them. Its illustrations – including giant vertical graphics that unfold over 10 pages – cover everything from stars to the evolution of rocket science, with maps of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth and the moon.

I’m going to map more historical periods, including the 15 th century.Īstronomy is my other big passion, and my second book, Vargic’s Curious Cosmic Compendium, is a visual guide to space, the universe and everything in it. My historic maps show how the world looked in 1875, 19, but in the format of a modern map. I’d love to go back and see Wales, Scotland and the Lake District. I’m very interested in the UK even though I’ve only been once, to visit London. I’ve made a similar map of the effect of rising sea levels worldwide, but this one goes into more detail. It shows Norwich surviving as a few Anglian Islands and a standalone Norfolk Broads national park. If this happened and sea levels rose 70 metres, much of the nation would be submerged, including cities such as London, Liverpool and Glasgow, and most of eastern England. One of my new maps, Britannia Under the Waves, shows how the British Isles would look if the ice caps completely melted. I slowly build it up, adding coastlines, seas, shading and texture. Then I make a rough draft, mapping areas of interest into continents. Up to half of that time is spent on online research. A big one, say the Map of Literature, which catalogues more than 7,000 writers, poets and dramatists over 5,000 years, takes three or four months. A small map, such as a Map of Festivals around the world, might take me a week. Then I learned to use Windows Paint, and now I use Photoshop – it’s so much easier. When I started making maps, I drew them by hand. Some of my favourite historical cartographers are Fra Mauro, who created a map of the world in the 13 th century Abraham Ortelius, who created the first modern atlas in 1570 and Joan Blaeu, a Dutchman who published the first heliocentric world map in 1648. But I am inspired by historic maps from the 16 th to 19 th centuries: I’m a big fan of a vintage style, but I put a modern twist on it. National Geographic maps are some of the best maps ever made. But it also includes serious maps, such as the Map of Separatist Europe, which shows what the continent would look like if all the regions striving for independence achieved it, and more lighthearted ones, such as which countries prefer dogs to cats. Maps of Common Foods around the world, and the cost of a beer, appear in my first book, Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps.

Online fantasy map creator