geek out

Oh my. I know I can get totally geeked out over silly things, cheese, good pens, fonts, i.p.a.
Still buzzing from hanging with the artsy types in Copenhagen I have been preparing for a more artistic mission on my upcoming trip. Hence the geeking out over mechanical pencils, sketch books, maps, and the like. This all lead to an epic internet binge where I unearthed some exciting stuff.
First thing is Good magazine's cool map that details famous journeys. I think it is worth a bit of an explore, especially if you enjoy a bit of good design. I fiddled around with it for a bit looking at Kerouac crossing the states, and the trans-siberian's epic journey spanning asia.
Though very different Good's map somehow reminds me of the hand drawn maps from Mark Elliot's guide to southeast asia. I used this book extensively while I traveled through the region. Before I arriving I couldn't really grasp the usefulness of the thing, but it quickly showed it's true colors. The maps were way more convenient than all that usual wordiness and the book was missing all that strange commentary that the Lonely Planet writers feel free to include. It is not the book for you if you want a hand holding guide book, but if you are more on the pirate, yarh-ed out end of traveling you might dig it, or you might not want a guide book at all.
In my dreams I will someday write a similar graphic guide book to central america, the problem is I keep getting mildly distracted by other things. Bad excuse I know. One such thing is project inspired by Valeria. She broke my heart when she showed me Stefano Faravelli's book on his travels in India (In viaggio con l’elefante). If I never had a desire to learn Italian and move to India before, I did after looking at this book. Learning Italian so that I could read his writing, and India because, well it's India. I also stumbled upon the blog of a drawing course in Italy that also focuses on documenting travels in a similar manner.
So now my plan is to drag watercolors and pencils to Cambodia and spend my time drawing and painting the days away, while of course laughing my ass off with Michael. We shall see how it goes.