The Map That Knows Too Much

The official BVG transit map of Berlin is a functional object. Stations, lines, transfer points. It tells you exactly how to get from A to B and nothing about either place. It hangs on a lot of apartment walls doing nothing for the room.

Illustrator Jenni Sparks made something different: a hand-drawn map of the city packed with the kind of knowledge that takes years to accumulate—neighborhood quirks, local mythology, small true things that official cartography doesn’t bother with. The kind of detail that makes someone who’s lived there a decade stop and think, wait, I didn’t know that. It’s available through Evermade in a few sizes, between ninety and a hundred and fifty euros depending on how much wall you have.

A map that actually knows the city it’s mapping is worth every cent.