Boston Typographic Framed Poster

This is the 2nd edition of our popular Boston map, first introduced back in 2010. Like that earlier map, this new edition accurately depicts the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type. Every single piece of type was manually placed, a process that took hundreds of hours to complete.

Most notably, the 2nd edition covers a much larger area than before, extending from Medford and Malden in the north all the way down to Dedham, Milton, and the Blue Hills Reservation in the south. Watertown marks its western extent, with the airport and harbor forming the eastern boundary of the map. This means that we now include over half a million more people on the map than we had previously! In the center of the map is the entire city of Boston proper, along with Cambridge, Somerville, and other towns across the Charles River.

To make the 2nd edition, we started from scratch with the latest geographic data and place names from Open Street Map. In addition, we gave the map a fresh new design. New water styling is reminiscent of our Washington, DC map, displayed as reversed out white text on a dark blue background. Parks and institutions follow suit with their respective background colors. The result is a bolder look with higher contrast that gives the map more definition and makes some features, like small parks, narrow rivers, and jetties, easier to see.