An orientation plan showing how to reach the exhibition Fantastische Karten zu legendären Geschichten / Fantastical Maps from Legendary Stories at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich.
About the Exhibition
Fantastische Karten zu legendären Geschichten / Fantastical Maps from Legendary Stories is an exhibition at Zentralbibliothek Züric (ZB) dedicated to the many ways maps shape imagined worlds. Bringing together examples from literature, film, games, mythology, and historical cartography, it stages a dialogue between the fictional maps of the Ex Carta collection and the historical holdings of ZB’s Department of Maps and Panoramas. The exhibition looks at maps not merely as illustrations or navigational tools, but as cultural artefacts that help tell stories, structure knowledge, and create worlds.
Since part of the library will be under construction during the exhibition, the usual access routes will be blocked. I was therefore tasked to create an A5 orientation map for their promotional flyer to show how to reach the exhibition's two venues.
Exploring the Map
Of course, an orientation map for an exhibition about fantastical maps needs a few fantastical elements of its own. There shall be dragons!
The construction site offered the perfect opportunity for that. It is precisely places of danger and inaccessibility that traditionally have been filled with monsters on maps. I even had a draft that labelled the construction site as a "Stätte mit Erneuerungsmagie (Nebelzone)", that is, a site with regeneration or restoration magic (a foggy zone). Unfortunately, that got scraped because it was too fuzzy and potentially confusing for an orientation map.
In fact, reconciling the clear and precise communication of locations and access routes with the vision of a fantasy map (to fit the exhibition theme) proved to be more challenging than I thought. But that is also what made it fun. And besides the dragon, a few other fantasy elements still made it into the final map, after all.
I added a winged lion that pulls a cart of bricks to give a nod to Narnia's Aslan and the heraldic animal of Zurich (who is doing the construction). I know, neither have wings, but they clearly identify the element as fictional.
I turned the choir of the Predigerchurch that now houses the main exhibition space into a steaming cauldron with a tilted lid (the roof). This is a nod to the exhibition structure in this venue, which is informed by J. R. R. Tolkien’s idea of the “Cauldron of Story”. For more on this, see my visual interpretation of his idea in the exhibition map The Cauldron of Story / Der Geschichtenkessel (coming soon).
Lastly, can you spot the Marauder’s Map reference?
HINT: It's pink.
HINT: It's pink.
SOLUTION: The pink footprints in the Schatzkammer.
Thanks and Credits
This was my first commissioned map, and it was a real pleasure and honour to create it for an awesome project like the Fantastical Maps exhibition! Special thanks go to the team at the ZB and Madeleine Stahel for the many discussions that made this such an enjoyable collaboration!
The map was painted in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator on a Wacom Cintiq. The watercolour effect was created using Adobe's watercolour brushes.
