Getting Maptastic with Skillshare

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen a few posts of hand-drawn maps with the hashtag #maptastic and wondered what the heck I was working on.Well, I'm going to tell you! I recently signed up for a three-week online class via Skillshare aimed at teaching curious minds how to communicate places beautifully through map design. The class is taught by Anne Ditmeyer of Prêt à Voyager and it is AWESOME.

There are currently 699 students enrolled from all over the world and the student projects range from embroidered maps of Portland, Oregon's bridges (!!!) to a map illustrating fun things to do and see if you have one day in Dublin, Ireland.

I'm working on mapping the route(s) food takes to get from farm to fork here in the Sacramento area. You can see my full project profile here, if you're interested.

As my Sacramento readers will tell you, we've just been named America's Farm to Fork Capital and we're pretty proud of that designation. I'm in the process of reaching out to chefs and farmers to see if I can put together a little field trip. While many of these folks are extremely busy, I've got my fingers crossed that it'll work out.

That said, one of my favorite aspects of the class is that students can go at their own pace. Even if it takes me a few more days to set up a field trip, I won't really be behind since the schedule is just a guideline. How's that for convenient?! No design skills are required and it's been amazing to see how others are approaching their projects.

There's still time to sign up and I highly recommend it. Anne has access to so many resources and her lectures and tutorials are super inspiring. At last check, new students can still use the coupon code HIGHFIVE for a discount.

So, what are you waiting for? Come design with us!