EmoriaCustom art prints and star maps
Maps · Collection 01

Vancouver poster, drawn from the real map

49.2827°N / 123.1207°W · Canada

A peninsula pushes out into the water, and it carries a second one at its tip: the first is built to the last yard, the second is green from edge to edge.

You choose the framing, the palette and the words of the caption. The work is drawn from real data, then printed to order in the workshop closest to you.

Compose my Vancouver poster
What the map shows

A built peninsula carrying another, left to the trees

The shape is one thing inside another, and it reads in a second. Downtown occupies a tongue of land caught between a wide inlet to the north and a narrow arm of water to the south; at its tip, a second piece of land, broader and rounder, carries nothing but forest and a road that goes around it. On the detailed background, where the centre fills with a dense grain of buildings, the contrast becomes blunt: two neighbouring peninsulas, one entirely constructed, the other entirely left alone.

Read on

Now look at the far shore, above the inlet. The streets there stop running straight: they wind into loops that follow the contours of the ground, with tongues of woodland coming down between them to the water. It is the only place on the sheet where the drawing of the streets changes its logic, and it says mountain better than the green does. The forest itself is not continuous: the higher you go, the more the white takes over, because the background knows mapped vegetation and not altitude. So do not count on a green curtain to the north; count on streets that turn.

Compose your own

What suits Vancouver

The palette

Two masses, and they have to answer each other: the water, which takes nearly half the sheet, and the green of the second peninsula, which is the subject. Take both frank and clearly distinct, or the wooded point melts into the inlet and the whole nesting figure disappears. The built centre, conversely, gains from staying very pale: it is by its emptiness of colour that it stands against the green block beside it. One nuance to watch in the north, where the woods on the far shore are holed with white: too pale a green will make patches there, too dense a green will make gaps.

The framing

Portrait, the two peninsulas in the middle of the sheet and the inlet above them. The southern arm of water has to stay whole, it closes the shape at the bottom. Further south again, the grid runs on for miles to the airport: it adds nothing and can leave, as the research file itself says. To the north, pulling back further would give more mountain but mostly more white, and downtown would lose its size: the setting stops before that.

The caption

The title, one line under it, the coordinates. The name of a beach, a berth number, the year you arrived: between two peninsulas and three waters, that line is what fixes the place.

The sheet
Subject
Vancouver, Canada
Palette
Granit
Map style
Clean and Detailed
Layout
Label
Typeface
Minimal · 90%
Framing
Zoom 11.4
Fade at the edges
5%
Format
Portrait
The palette of this poster

Granit

Sixteen inks, in the configurator’s order. It is not in the catalogue, but you will find it in the palette library, filed under its material.

  • Background
  • Water
  • Greenery
  • Built-up areas
  • Roads
  • Buildings
  • Text
  • Motorways
  • Main roads
  • Secondary roads
  • Minor roads
  • Streets
  • Service roads
  • Paths
  • Railways
  • Borders
Compose with this paletteStart from it to make your own

Opens the colour workshop with these 16 inks in place: change one, keep the rest.

It will wait in your account, ready for any piece.

What the drawing tells

Three dates that explain the city

1870Six acres around a drinking establishment

The colonial government had the surveyor Frederick Walter Green lay out a six acre townsite, Granville, around the saloon of a talkative publican nicknamed Gassy Jack. The nickname passed to the district, which has been Gastown ever since. Six acres is less than a single downtown block covers today: everything you see on that peninsula came afterwards, and quickly.

1886Incorporated 6 April, burned 13 June

Granville was incorporated as the city of Vancouver on 6 April, in anticipation of the Canadian Pacific terminus. On 13 June a fire reduced it to ashes in under an hour: between six hundred and a thousand buildings. It was rebuilt at once. The fabric you read on the peninsula was two months old when it burned, and it is the one that came after that has held.

1888The park was asked for before anything else

The very first act of the first city council, elected in 1886, was to ask the Dominion for the old military reserve on the point in order to make a park of it. It opened on 27 September 1888: four hundred hectares of coastal forest. The second peninsula on this map is therefore not a remnant, it is a request, made by a city that at the time owned almost nothing.

Before ordering

The four questions people ask

Can I choose any place, any date?

Yes. The search covers the whole world, from a capital to a hamlet. For the Sky collection, any date works, past or future: the sky is calculated.

What sizes do you offer?

From 21 × 29.7 cm to 84.1 × 118.9 cm, that is A4 to A0, portrait or landscape depending on the material. Every size is shown with its price in the editor.

What materials do you offer?

Four, from the barest to the most dressed.

  • Matte fine art paperA 200 gsm art paper with a deep matte finish: the bare print, to frame as you please.
  • Wooden hangersThe print suspended between two wooden hangers, ready to hang, in the spirit of studio posters.
  • The classic frameThe print mounted under acrylic glass in a slim frame, assembled by hand, delivered ready to hang.
  • Framed canvasThe piece printed on canvas, stretched over a wooden stretcher bar and set in a frame: a gallery presence.
How long does it take?

Allow 1 to 4 working days for making, up to 7 for hand-assembled frames and canvases, then 1 to 6 working days in transit with standard delivery.

Digital editions are available immediately: the file of your piece is emailed to you as soon as you order.

All the questions

Your Vancouver

The loop round the park you walked on Sundays, the bridge caught at the wrong hour, the far shore you climbed to see the whole city. The two peninsulas are the same for everyone. The one you spent your days on is not.

Compose my Vancouver poster