Peter Gorman: “Barely Maps”
Peter Gorman lives in Waikoloa, Hawaii. He started his career after a yearlong 11,000-mile bike trip of the U.S. and Canada. At the end of the journey, he decided to design the intersections of the cities he had visited. He began as a hobby, but when he posted Seattle’s intersection online everything changed.
Intersections
The artist highlighted the absurdity and wackiness behind the streets of the city, by representing them in a minimalistic design. This fact made the internet went crazy, someone twitted that the intersection seemed Chinese lettering, someone compared the icons to yoga poses and break dancers.
The huge success he received from the cyber population made him sell his works on his Etsy store, called “Barely Maps”. People started to ask him commissions about other cities. Other from the fact that his designs come out looking like beautiful abstract art, there is so much more that comes with them. The artist is in fact able to capture the essence of a place though his simple designs.
“You can get a sense of the city’s geography and how it was laid out. It’s tied into what the original founders conceived the city would be.”
Peter Gorman
He now has sold more than five thousand prints, has made more than ninety cities. He has published a book called “Barely Maps”, in which they are all compiled.
Maps, Coasts and Lakes
Gorman didn’t limit himself at the design of only intersections, in fact he began to create maps of entire neighborhoods. Obviously the images aren’t iperealistic representation, but simple, clean and minimal designs. For exemple, he made San Francisco’s Chinatown as a big red skyscraper over a pinkish background. The artist also decided to sometimes change the urban subject for a natural one, representing coasts, lakes and trails. Obviously the images aren’t iperealistic landscapes, but simple and clean designs.
He is now working on two more books, all about maps and charts. The first book will contain a thousand maps about the 1851 novel by Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, while the second one will have data about the internet.
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