Tiny Atlas

Tiny Atlas makes one thing: a folded paper map of a walk, sized to a single sheet, with an elevation strip along the bottom and nothing else on it.

It has no account system, no sharing, and no app. You draw a route, you press print, and you fold the result into your pocket. The whole project is an argument that some outputs should leave the screen.

Why paper

A phone on a hillside is a battery you are rationing and a screen you cannot read. A paper map is legible in rain, survives being sat on, and does not interrupt the walk to show you a notification. It is also, and this matters more than it should, nice to look at afterwards.

The typography problem

Most of the work went into labels. A map label has to be readable at eight point, in the rain, printed on a domestic inkjet, over a background of contour lines it does not control. The answer turned out to be a heavier weight than looked right on screen, a small halo in the paper colour behind every label, and ruthlessly fewer names than I first wanted.

I have printed about sixty of these. Four are framed.