NACIS Program Map | August 2025

I was invited by the sitting Vice President of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) to create the program map for the 2025 annual meeting in Louisville, KY. This map is located on the back of the print programs that are given to each attendee upon checking in. The purpose of the map is to help orient attendees to relevant off-site conference activities, nearby attractions, and affordable food spots to the conference hotel. With the dimensions being only 4 in. by 6 in., this was quite a task!

My vision for the map was to incorporate some sketchy elements, similar to if someone was notating a map by hand for the conference. I began designing within the conference color scheme of purple and yellow, accounting for the fact that the selected purple would come out as more pink in print. With that in mind, I used inner glow features in a darker purple that applied to the base of the map to ensure that there was still contrast to the map features that would be placed on top. I used yellow as an accent, thinking of it as a highlighter. I used the yellow for the hand drawn arrows that draw attention to the off-site conference activities and for the boxes that hold the names for those locations. In addition to the hand drawn arrows, I also hand drew the Belle of Louisville that can be seen on the water.

Alongside using some hand drawn features, I also tried to evoke the hand annotated feel by using a typeface that looked more hand written. I opted for a typeface that crossed between looking typed and looking like very clean hand print to aid in readability. To tie in some Louisville flair into the map, I used the fleur de lis as the centerpiece of the directional indicator.