Hand-typed 'USA'

‘USA’ is a six-class elevation map of the contiguous United States featuring famous mountain ranges, plains, and coastlines. Created by layering over 2,100 hand-typed keystrokes (U, S, A, and their combinations) with a 1953 ROYAL Quiet De Luxe typewriter on Masa 77gsm paper from Japan.

Part of the work of design is exploring what is possible with design.

‘USA’ is rooted in observing a cheapening value to our electronic artifacts. I was rescued from my digital despondency by dreaming about different ways to make data graphics. My fantasies stretched beyond merely printing digital work to making maps by hand. I sought a method whose craft might imbue its product with specialness.

The result is a format with severely constrained elements: canvas, pixel-grid, and color palette (via overtyped keystrokes). I’m delighted to have formulated a style that feels both fresh and familiar, as if it has always been here. The challenge of producing this feeling under such severe constraints gives me enormous satisfaction.

‘USA’ is my second hand-typed design. The first, a seven-class elevation map of California, was acquired by David Rumsey for Stanford University. ‘California’ proved the aesthetic appeal of this method and trained me in the performance required to create this kind of map.

‘USA’ pushes the method further after studying 1960s concrete poetry, where words are images and images are words. In particular, ‘USA’ has no displayed title because its subject is its substrate: elevation colors are created with the letters U, S, and A—read the map eastward and you will read USA. The palette materializes from the map. It is a small and incremental step forward, but it is a step toward a more complete design.

Price includes delivery.