🗄️ Official Maps: Archive

The threads here are an archive, a memory bank of previous - now unavailable - Studio Legenda maps. With some back story and details about their development processes. Feel free to ask questions about them. Any requests about (re)releases should be posted in the Map Requests forum.

This experiment-turned-map is one of the more colorful and stranger maps I made. I wanted to create a vibrant city map of some place familiar to me: Groningen. Now, this abstract city map has a certain ruleset: All roads need to adhere to either horizontal, vertical or 45º angles. All street connections need to be in their proper order and places, the lengths of streets are of lesser importance. This results in some funny angles and a completely different look to this, otherwise, rounded and somewhat chaotic medieval city center. Groningen ended up looking like an SD card. I illustrated all the landmarks in simple outlines. If the layout allowed it, I would draw it from the side in 2D. However, some buildings required a more 2.5D...

The most comprehensive railway map of the Netherlands. It features all major (heavy) railway passenger lines from the past, current and (possible) future. It includes every station that ever was, is and may be. It also features the museum lines because they deserve every mention they can get. It's a nice sister map of the Dutch Highway Map. It features hundreds of stations and multiple lines that no longer exist. This includes the first railway stations built in the Netherlands between Amsterdam and Haarlem. It - of course - also features the high speed rail link. It is more angular than the Highway Map, but features subtle curves. The density of information was such that I had to tone down the size of the curves to fit as much in as...

This is the third version of the Dutch Highway Map. It was a minor iteration on the 2020 version, safe for the addition of the information box and Studio Legenda line at the bottom. I added some text to explain the choices made during the design phase of the map. And the key contains examples using names from my imaginary city of Wisburg. This map remained up-to-date all the way until 2024, when it finally sold out.

This flow-y and colorful map was my response to the release of a new official map by the Dutch Railways (NS). I vehemently disagreed with the styling and horrible legibility of that map, so I decided to have a crack at it. This map has a certain number of rules that guide it. Station labels had to be on the same side of a bundle of lines. This worked almost everywhere, safe for having to make a single twist at Heiloo and at Maarn. The various providers all had their own color group. NS was mostly yellow-brownish. Arriva red(ish). And so on. All labels had to be horizontal. This makes them much easier to read. Labels are not (and still aren't) allowed to overlap lines. Again, to improve legibility. I wanted to include museum railways...

The second Dutch Highway Map was created in the Year We All Remember Fondly (YWARF). This was the precursor to the 2021 and 2024 versions, and really set the tone for the Highway map's future iterations up until the time of writing. It was more symmetrical, much cleaner in its lines and gone was the deluge of information on the back or the coordinate system. Also left out were the rest stop names, to keep administration of the map simple. There are many features about this map that I found pleasing to draw, and I find pleasing to look at. These include (but aren't limited to) the nice 'X' south of Nieuwegein where the A2 crosses the A27 at Everdingen. Or how the A32 is a straight line from Lankhorst to Leeuwarden. The sawtooth pattern...

These were a series of A3 posters of simple illustrations of Dutch landmark buildings. I started with churches and a tower or two, but I quickly grew bored drawing these. I doubt anyone has all 5 of these church towers, though. I started drawing these to scale, but I think the final prints were slightly scaled, causing the individual church towers to all look of similar height (which they definitely are not). Rare, won't be reproduced or done again. I'd rather make maps :)

The first Dutch Highway Map was created between 2015 and 2018, going viral in December of 2018. It was subsequently released (as I scrambled to figure out how to run a webshop and have hundreds of maps printed). The map was printed on A2 paper and looked rather featureless, even though it wasn't. Looking back on it, it was rather dull and white. And far too small. Of course, newer versions would correct this. However, this map has been unavailable for years and will (of course) become increasingly rare. It also had a back! This map came complete with an index. Although I mention it looked featureless, it did have a coordinate system where you could find any on- and offramp. I doubt anyone ever used it that way, as most people by these...