Skip to main content

Modern Map Art is a Design Savvy Way to Rep Your City

Modern-Map-Art-3
303, 818, 505, 226…

Everyone has their city. Drake has Toronto, Elvis had Memphis then Las Vegas, Neil Diamond was all about Brooklyn, and both Kiss and Eminem share Detroit.

That’s because people care about places.

The new company Modern Map Art, founded in 2016, honed in on this very deep and true inkling to rep our cities. After returning from a honeymoon that entailed traveling the world, and always having a passion for vintage atlases, the idea took root to start a company that printed city grids on maps, pillows, and phone cases.

Modern Map Art takes your favorite cities, mountains, and places and turns them into radical works of art. Primarily, they’re a way to remember where you came from, the city where you and your SO got engaged, or even the town you hope to retire to.

Modern-Map-Art-2

And while Modern Map Art offers 500 domestic city options from Albuquerque to Albany, they also make maps of Aberdeen England, Accra Ghana, and other international destinations. (The company ships worldwide.)

The style and aesthetic of each vastly different city is unionized into one consistent format; black and white grids that are highly paired down and simplified. (Colors available with customization.) Sitting around $29.99 per map, the pieces are clean and sophisticated. It’s not your average dorm-room poster, thank the lord. But before you think the maps are TOO simple, know the attention to detail goes so far as to make each of the thousands of street lines a different width in correspondence to the side of each road.

Zooming out, the company has a very small, curated selection of country map posters that depict Bangladesh, Brazil, China, and India. But we would guess if you revisit the site in three months, there will be even more. That’s the beauty of the pursuit; there are so many places that matter to so many people.

Modern-Map-Art-5

Alongside cities and countries (now this is really sweet, especially for skiers and boarders), Modern Map Art also makes poster prints of your favorite ski mountains. The runs and difficulty levels are charted in an almost skeleton rendering. Again, simplicity reigns and provides a modern staple piece for any room.

Made in the USA and printed on museum-quality posters made of thick matte paper, the Modern MapArt posters are fingerprint resistant and perfect for framing.

Pillowcases that look almost like a Marimekko Finnish pattern, and poster-replica iPhone cases round out the topographical offerings from this co. And it’s funny— seeing the map of your city is like seeing your name on a keychain in a roadside gas station. There’s an excitement and pride that goes along with it.

Modern-Map-Art-6

But keep in mind, if Modern Map Art’s doesn’t offer your area code, you can always pick your own stomping grounds via their customization option.

The world really is is your oyster. Or, wall art.

Photos courtesy Modern Map Art

Editors' Recommendations

Jahla Seppanen
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Born and raised off-the-grid in New Mexico, Jahla Seppanen is currently a sports, fitness, spirits, and culture writer in…
The 16 best war movies of all time, ranked
From Inglourious Basterds to The Thin Red Line, there are the best war movies that you can stream now.
Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, and other actors playing as American soldiers riding a boat in "Saving Private Ryan."

War movies are among the most morally sticky films produced in Hollywood. While the best war movies go out of their way to reveal the violence and bloodshed that comes with any armed conflict, many can't help but valorize the men and women who fight in these wars. As a result, many movies about war end up glorifying war even if the creative voices behind the project didn't intend them to. In the best war movies, though, moral questions are never easily answered. Well, unless your war movie is a Star Wars movie. 
If you want black-and-white morality, this list of the best action movies on Netflix may better fit the bill. 

War movies, on the other hand, often speak to the way that violence breaks men, even if they believe in their cause. These war movies will shake you to your core, and remind you that humanity is capable of being messy and violent just as frequently as it is brave and valorous. 

Read more
The 10 best action movies on Amazon Prime that will blow you away
From The Tomorrow War to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, these are the best movies you can watch on Amazon Prime
how to watch the tomorrow war online

There's a reason action movies are so popular. The best action movies can thrill you with a dazzling combination of car chases, fight scenes, and special effects. The best action movies can also, and this is important, be wonderfully dumb. Indeed, the plot of an action movie is typically fairly unimportant, as long as the set pieces that get you from sequence to sequence are compelling enough. If you're looking for some great action, you don't need to look much further than these, which are some of the best action movies on Amazon Prime. Whether your goal is to find something gritty and realistic or something completely silly but joyous nonetheless, Prime has plenty of great movies to choose from.

For more great action movies, you can check out the best action movies on Netflix or the best action movies on Hulu.

Read more
The 11 best Sean Connery movies of all time
These films starring the Scottish actor rise above the rest
best sean connery movies ranked seanconnery1

Connery leans on the classic Bond Aston Martin on the set of Goldfinger.
If you're too young to remember the hype around Sean Connery, ask your parents or grandparents what it was like to be a movie fan during his era of stardom. There wasn't a person on the planet who didn't immediately think of Connery when listing the actors with the biggest screen presence. But what is it that makes this man so incredibly iconic? Could it be because he never changes his voice for movies because “the emotions should be the same, internationally”? Perhaps it’s because of his unique Scottish accent that any novice impersonator is sure to try and mimic. All we know for sure is: Connery’s James Bond is -- for an overwhelming majority -- the best and most memorable of all 007 iterations in history.
Though his big on-screen break was as the devilishly handsome and smooth secret agent, real fans know that Sean Connery was much more than that. Besides being a respectful, earnest, and successful actor, Connery spent his first 25 years -- starting at the age of 7 -- working manual labor jobs and eventually joining the Royal Navy at 16. Truly a man of many hidden talents, he also took dance lessons for 11 years, was offered a soccer contract with Manchester United, and also spent time working as a nude model for art students after being honorably discharged from the military.
There are so many reasons to love the late, great Sir Sean Connery, but we are here to praise him for his most memorable on-screen performances. Yes, James Bond will, of course, be mentioned, but we also bring out the later films in his career that made him so much himself. So mix yourself a vodka martini “shaken, not stirred” and help us celebrate the shining star that was Sean Connery.

Dr. No (1962)

Read more