What is Creative Cartography?

By Alexia on October 28, 2011 in Classes

Creative Cartography is a way to represent all the steps of your project visually. You’ll be learning a whole-brained system to plan the project and create your own Project Treasure Map. I’m not one to leave you there alone wondering what to do next, so alongside the Project Treasure Map, you’ll learn to make Daily Expedition Maps to help you chart your progress daily.

Now, why use maps?

First of all, it’s so exciting to draw a map for projects instead of using boring spreadsheets, lists & calendars!

Second, we are all visually-oriented people. Unless some tragedy happened, we get the majority of our information through our eyes.

Not only that, the more senses we involve in whatever we’re doing, the more it sticks in our brains.

While we go through the Creative Cartography process, we’re going to use our sense of sight, touch, sound & smell (that is, if you use lovely scented markers), and taste if you decide to find a food/drink to associate with your planning.

Project maps we create in the Creative Cartography class will be BIG so you can post it on your wall to see your progress. You’ll draw your Daily maps in a sketchbook so you can look back and see all the amazing awesome stuff you’ve done.

Because honestly, Creative Explorers have a really tough time at remembering what we’ve done in the past. We’re always focused on the “what’s next” that we tend to leave our amazing accomplishments behind in the dust. This is a recipe for feeling like a failure when you can’t remember you were published in a book last year or you won first place in a juried art exhibition (true stories), or even that you set off on your own and started your own business! That’s a HUGE accomplishment that can’t be forgotten.

But these often are forgotten.

Silly brains.

So, besides getting a fun visual representation of your project, you’re getting memories that will stick with you when you need a reminder of how much you’ve actually accomplished. They’ll stick with you precisely because we’re using multiple senses to create these maps.