Remediation and Cultural Memory: Hand-Drawn Tourist Map

Hand-drawn tourist map provides readers with a brand new visual experience that is quite different from what we usually get from the traditional maps. In recent years, hand-drawn map enjoys a great popularity in China not only for the reason of its creative use of media formats, but also because it evokes a sense of nostalgia of the past. Although hand-drawn tourist map is not as precise as digital map, it is aesthetic while at the same time very practical.

In today’s computerized society, we are gradually losing our ability of using pen and paper to remember things. Instead, there is a variety of computer and mobile programs that provide an easy access and simple method for us to use. We have GPS, Google map, and various APPs that could be easily installed on your IPhone, and with just a click, you could quickly find the nearest route to your destination. People always prefer the easiest way to do things, so traditional map is of no use any more. But as far as I’m concerned, despite the portability of high-tech devices, paper map will still exist in the way that books will do. Technology continues to change, but it will never replace the traditional way that paper map functions in our daily life. In other word, high technologies could provide us with an option, rather than a replacement.

Quite like the hand-drawn maps made by local university students that I have talked about on the first blog post, hand-drawn tourist map is also made by local residents, amateur as well as professional. It gives people the freedom to create and express their own memories of the places. Unlike digital map, every hand-drawn map has its unique features. For instance, it may combine traditional Chinese painting style with digital photographs and graphics, like the maps shown in Figure 10, 11, 15, 18, and 19, and it could also use the forms of cartoon and computer animation, together with digital maps, to draw the map (see Figure 12 and 13). As the maps that I have shown from Figure 10 to 19 below, each of them has a unique look, colour, and style to make them look differently. In a word, it is up to you to decide how you want to draw the map.

Hand-drawn map could also be regarded as a way to inherit the cultural heritage. Most people buy hand-drawn maps for collection and remembrance, rather than for its practical use. Its collecting value and aesthetics far exceed its practicability.