Journal

A crossing drawn as it happened

The gap between the course you plotted and the track you sailed is the whole print. Nothing else in navigation shows the wind so...

Choosing the line colour

Four colours, and the choice is less about taste than about what the print has to do on the wall it is going on.

Last race, last commute, last season

Endings are under-marked. The final version of something you did for years deserves the same object as a first, and almost nobody gives one.

An open-water swim makes a strange, good line

No roads, no paths, and a swimmer who cannot see where they are going. The result is the least infrastructural drawing in endurance sport.

Five boroughs, one line

The only major marathon whose drawing is a geography lesson. The bridges are what make it, and they are also where the GPS gives...

Moving time or elapsed time on a print

One of them is the answer you give people. The other is what the day actually took. They are rarely the same and the...

Matte or museum paper for a map print

One is the right default and the other is worth the money in exactly one situation. What the weight and the finish actually change.

Clean line or a map behind it?

The same ride reads completely differently with streets underneath. One answers what shape, the other answers where — and only one of them ages...

The London Marathon, drawn

One of the few marathon courses that is instantly recognisable as a shape. What makes it draw well, and the one section that always...

Komoot and RideWithGPS routes

Both hold planned routes as well as completed ones — and the difference matters more than you would expect once it is on paper.