Cartographers: Richard Saul Wurman

Information Design Maven created the best U.S. Atlas You May Have Never Heard Of

Richard Saul Wurman isn’t, strictly speaking, a mapmaker, as his bio (at wurman.com) makes clear. A better term might be information designer. He cares very deeply about making information understandable, and clearly is one with design as applied to maps, however.

Prolific in the area of information design he has written and designed nearly 70 books on all facets of information design, from books on theory to practical works. He is most known by the general public for his color coded Access travel book series.

In 1990 and 1991, however, he turned his innovative eye on the common US road atlas. Everyone has seen many versions from many publishers, and they all tend to a typical format: states arranged in alphabetical order, with city map insets. Some are functional, some are obfuscatory, all are weak in some degree, either presenting too much information or too little.

The result was USAtlas, a true innovation in map design for the motorist going out to discover America.
This book is a masterpiece of clean and informative design which preserves the necessary but still is beautiful and insightful.

The maps in the book come in three varieties:

• 250 x 250 mile map pages, “The United States, the way you drive it”. These are not organzied on a state-by state basis, but rather vertical columns of two-page spreads. A sample of one of these pages can be seen in the illustration above. Each pages has clear references, straight-ahead sans-serif type, and roads that are clearly identified by hierarchy. Generous margins provide for small bits of local trivia and interest, and show ghosted images of the next page over-as well as clear type showing which page to look on for it.
• 25 x 25 mile map pages, showing 40 metropolitan centers in enough detail to give one a sense of the city-whether one goes into or around it
• 5 x 5 mile center dity detail areas covering 11 major American cities

This is, unquestionably, one of the most useful and aptly designed US atlases ever done. Regrettably, only two editions were done–1990, and an expanded edition in 1991. As a result, many people aren’t aware of this publication. It’s hoped that this article will redress this somewhat

USAtlas is worth having on every cartophile’s bookshelf. Even though the book is more than a decade out of print, it is beautiful, and the lessons of design it illustrates are timeless.

USAtlas 1991
by Richard Saul Wurman
1991, 156pp (plus index and addit’l info), Access Press, 156pp, 1991
Buy this book at Amazon.com