An Ohio mapmaker with ‘creativity’ and ‘whimsy’

The AP has a neat little story about the man who’s been in charge of designing the non-highway area on the back of the Ohio state map for nearly 20 years. There’s a video*, too, about the Easter eggs he puts in the photo collages that feature his daughter.

I wish a little bit of that creativity would be applied to the actual map, though. In my opinion, Ohio’s state map (large PDF) does not rank high from a cartographic-design perspective. It’s hard to tell between two-lane state and US routes, for example. I feel like those two-lane lines should be a hair thicker, although given Ohio’s larger and more squiggly network that might not be possible. Insistence on using the state-shape shield at that scale may be a factor in the clutter as well, although I’m sure many Ohioans take its use as a point of pride.

*If the freaking Associated Press can’t use “free rei[g]n” correctly, we’re all doomed. But we already knew that.

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