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Vlad Gerasimov
23 January 2010
I got the idea of this map during my recent flight from Moscow to New York. The screen in front of me was showing flight route, including names of towns below our current location, changing quickly, as we were flying above Europe. This made me think - on all maps (except very detailed ones), you will meet the same set of cities - mostly capitals. This artwork is about all small towns that remain unnoticed by casual viewers of world maps.
I only included towns names, and not everything else, it was intentional - country borders, rivers, most lakes, etc. I was even considering deleting the border between oceans and earth, but then decided to keep it :-)
I used Google Maps as source of information. Obviously, I had to pick small towns randomly, because I had to make text large enough to be readable on computer screen. So if you live in a small town, but it is not listed on this map, please please please do not request to add it :-)
This artwork may look too busy, because it is more suited for large-sized printing. I will work on publishing it to as many sources as I can. Please watch this page for updates if you want to get it printed, or contact me.
The wallpaper version of artwork is cropped (sorry, Alaska!) to better fit 16:9 and 4:3 monitors. The original artwork is not cropped, and so will be the prints.
The map is not accurate, and is not meant to be so. All shapes and locations are approximate.
It took about a week to complete the map (2-3 hours each day).
If I may, I dedicate this map to Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
Enjoy! Thanks for viewing!
Marto
23 January 2010
How much time did it take you? :)
Vlad Gerasimov
23 January 2010
Marto - as I wrote, it took about a week to complete the map (2-3 hours each day).
Cristina
23 January 2010
I love it!!! Can you do it without the names?? I like the "canvas-like" world (does it make sense?)
Keep on goin' :)
Vlad Gerasimov
23 January 2010
Cristina: ooh. I'm afraid the whole meaning of this work was in these names. I see what you mean but I just put so much effort into names that I'd like to keep them for a while :-)
Tim
23 January 2010
For your next map project can you do one where each country is labeled in the country's own language? For example, United States, España, Nihon (Japan), etc. even cooler would be using kanji for Japan and other countries like that.
Ewa
23 January 2010
I don't see Olsztyn
Flo
23 January 2010
Where is Przemyśl?
Barbara
23 January 2010
I love it! Very touching to see place names that are otherwise overlooked by all but nearby residents.
Orkydee
23 January 2010
Great job!!!!!
Azhar Chougle
23 January 2010
Wow. Kudos on the effort, thought-provoking on the art side of it.
Kelli
23 January 2010
This is fabulous! How neat to see the names of teeny tiny little places on a map. I love it!!!!!
jamy015
23 January 2010
In the Netherlands there's only Heerenveen, lol :)
But really, great work!
Carl Willetts
23 January 2010
Nice work Vlad. Any chance of the map without the text please?
Carl Willetts
23 January 2010
Without the names you could call it 'The World Map of No Towns.'
LucasDT
24 January 2010
In Argentina, "Rio Gallegos" and "Ushuaia" are province capitals, so they are not small towns per se... on top of that, Ushuaia is the southest city in the world.
Heikki
24 January 2010
I think that finnish village Yli-Li shoud be Yli-ii (Yli-Ii). In Lappland there's lot of places called Yli-something and Ala-something. Yli and Ala means above and bottom. In the between of yli and ala there's just "something" :D Great work.
Graeme Wood
24 January 2010
If you look closely, just south of Ucluelet, you'll see me waving!
Jelle Bonnema
24 January 2010
Heerenveen! awesome :)
csoti
24 January 2010
Great work! Unfortunately i didn`t find any town from Hungary... http://www.vladstudio.com/hu/wallpaper/?world_map_small_towns#add_comment_box
Aziel
24 January 2010
So sad ! I don't see Epinay Sur Seine in France. But well work.
James Egli
24 January 2010
Coolest desktop yet! Thanks for all the work you put into it!
Francesc Genove Muñoz
24 January 2010
Good job. But what's your criteria for "small town"?
Llagostera (Catalonia, Spain) has nearly ten thousand inhabitants, and Santa Pola is a small city with thirty thousand people living in it.
In Spain a "small town" is a town with less than 2 thousand inhabitants. And there are a lots of them.
Vlad Gerasimov
25 January 2010
Francesc Genove Muñoz: I zoomed Google Maps to 50km, and searched for smallest cities that appeared on this zoom. I did not use the information about population - in that case, it would take me months to do this wallpaper. So this all is approximate.
Jynrya
25 January 2010
Love it! Always wondered when they'd make these maps of small towns...^_~ Lovely work!
Sergio Alejandro Sotomayor Esquinca
25 January 2010
Guerrero Negro in Mexico, i don't live there but I know that that ain't a small town is the largest salt producer in the WHOLE WORLD!! it may have very few people but it is for sure very important for the world!! :)
Smartinius
25 January 2010
I am sad, there is not even one Czech town
Ampit
25 January 2010
You did it again. Thanks. The small ones need recogniion.
Joe MacDonald
25 January 2010
Outstanding! I was a little bit disappointed that my hometown wasn't there, but you have an even smaller town from my home province, Souris, which I think is nicer than where I grew up, so I'm happy.
Any chance we could have one of these in a blue, though?
Jose Daniel
25 January 2010
Really amazing! I love your dedication... you did a great job and outstanding research :)
Luciana Guevara
26 January 2010
Me encantó la idea y la dedicatoria. ¡Mil gracias!
Shishulias
26 January 2010
Nice wallpaper, but why there isn´t any town from Slovakia???? We have small towns only. We are country of small towns.... Our capital Bratislava is small too.
tamalita
26 January 2010
this is so cool ... i am actually familiar with many of the small towns in my own country ... love it!
fengshaun
27 January 2010
Wow, Tabas is there, that's probably my favorite town of all time!
Brad Kinnan
27 January 2010
Wow! That is so cool to see my hometown of Benzonia, MI on one of your pieces of work. Free publicity!
Pari
27 January 2010
What a beautiful idea, and I love that you dedicated to Antoine de Saint Exupery.
Im :-)
27 January 2010
Fantastic...so many places I've never heard of!
Katie
27 January 2010
I was kind of annoyed that when you look at some sizes of this wallpaper New Zealand is cut off! You said 'Sorry Alaska' but what about 'Sorry New Zealand'?
Otherwise it's really cool!
sutko
27 January 2010
Any town from Slovakia???
James Egli
28 January 2010
Vlad, is your town on the map? If so, what's its name?
matt wilkie
28 January 2010
Nice job on the map, as usual, and more importantly I love the idea which inspired it. Thanks for bringing to the forefront some little oft-overlooked places.
One small correction: In Canada's NorthWest Territories it's "Norman Wells", not NormaL. :)
Some other small towns in northern canada since there is a little bit of room for more labels -- to *consider* I well understand you've already devoted a lot of time to this!
Old Crow, Yukon
Sachs Harbour, NWT
Alert, Nunavut
Resolute, Nunavut
Igloolik, Nunavut
Pond Inlet, Nunavut
Pangnirtung, Nunavut
(reference http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/reference/anniversary_maps/political_detailed )
and Svalbard, to have something in the really far north :)
Vlad Gerasimov
29 January 2010
James Egli: it is! My hometown is Irkutsk. Some other towns I included with purpose: my wife was born in Turuka, my wife's father in Nivischii, also, Cesaria Evora was born in Mindelo, Cape Verde, and Richard Bona was born in Minta, Cameroon.
gag
29 January 2010
ziaurei ggrazus
Nadya
29 January 2010
Beautiful.... I wish there were few towns form island countries... such as Apia, Samoa in South Pacific))))))))) Ocean seems pretty empty, but its not!!!
30 January 2010
great, I love it, Vlad!
Simon Metcalf
31 January 2010
I know you love maps Vlad and I was thinking I'd love you to do a world map of flags where each country is painted with its flag! This could be a bit of a challenge but you can get vector world country maps and all the flags from Wikipedia!
It would surely end up being a really wonderful and colourful patchwork!!
Vlad Gerasimov
31 January 2010
Simon Metcalf: it actually is a very good idea, thank! I will let it grow inside me for some time :-)
Shuang Wu
31 January 2010
nice idea, and great job as always. thanks
Gmq
31 January 2010
I love your wallpapers, but I have to say that the information on this one is not correct. I live in Perú, and the names in the map are either not in that place or not even in Perú.
Kasiope
1 February 2010
I have to agree with "Smartinius", there is no town of Czech or Slowak republic. For the Czech part i sugest one cosy town where i grew up with my family and i would be happy to see it there. Its name is "Polička" (or "Policka" without an accent).
Thank you, Martina
milo
1 February 2010
Hi, great idea. Don't worry, I'm not going to request you to add the name of my city into the chart, but the opposite: It is possible to have a version withouth any city names on it -I like the plain colour of the wall-
Thx and have a great week!
Liker
2 February 2010
I like it...
Jessica
4 February 2010
Awesome Map :D:D. Your maps are always my favourite wallpapers. Sorry to be annoying though, but I live next to Drysdale in Victoria, Australia but you have spelled it Daysdale lol...
Pam Bridges
4 February 2010
Jessica: I did not misspelled it. You can search for "Daysdale Australia" in Google Maps to see it actually exists.
Radhacelis
13 February 2010
This is great, I think I see Puerto Plata in Dominican Republic, lol! so much effort!
Kenneth Klassy
17 February 2010
Love the maps, I have this one on my desktop at work. Which by the way is in Antarctica so don't forget about us down here. I am at McMurdo station just south of New Zealand. Is a pretty small town/station. 190 ish folks this season.
jdfnjb
21 February 2010
good
Jan Blazicek
2 March 2010
Cool, you like Richard Bona as well :)
scarl
2 March 2010
Very cool work!
David
21 March 2010
looks cool, and what a good idea for all the people who grew up/live in small towns.
Great job, Vlad.
Julius
13 April 2010
Idea carina, ma non riesco a leggere i nomi delle città :(
garamoboylpret
14 April 2010
you,re going to have to make the names of towns bigger so i can see them vlad
Norwegian
19 April 2010
Great map! Though I don't think we would consider Haugesund a small town in Norway. It's the 17th largest city in the whole country. Then again, by international standards, it's very small.
Karin92
20 April 2010
That's really cute... quite a pity that no Czech town has fitted in, but that's life. What about a map of overlooked small countries? =))
BTW, Nuuk is also a capital, isn't it? =)
8 May 2010
you've brought the world together .... great work ... ! you have such a talent, amazing. kathy
puddinhead13
9 May 2010
I've actually been to one of the small towns in the Northwest, Ketchum that is. Although small, the local area is home to many celebs such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Carole King, and more. Thanks for including a piece of the state of Idaho, USA.
Keith George
13 June 2010
Owego NY is an awesome place, and quite lovely this time of year. Was just up there a couple of weeks ago. I'm impressed. You could have picked the name of any small town in the area, yet somehow you knew which one was the coolest.
haider
15 June 2010
where r the towns from Pakistan??
Ryan
28 June 2010
Nice idea.
Bird
9 July 2010
I'm from Alstonville, Australia! :)
otsen7
3 August 2010
okay headache i dont know how you work with this kind of stuff. geez. (but it is very cool)
rebecca
17 August 2010
gosh this is amazing.
Xenia
30 August 2010
Oh my God!
My hometown is on your map. Nestor in Greece
(Nestor was the wise King of Pylos - my hometown -, mentioned in Homers Iliad and Odysey. The Municipality that Pylos belongs to now has his name).
Ok, it's official. I used to just love your work but now ... well, now we're talking adoration
JaneC
8 November 2010
I'm not sure I would consider Irvine, California to be a small town--it has over 200,000 people, two universities, and headquarters of some very large companies like Blizzard Entertainment (who produce World of Warcraft), Gateway Computers, and Taco Bell. It would maybe have been better to choose a smaller Southern California town like Solvang (population 5,000) or Calipatria (population 7,000).
That said, the map is really pretty, and it is a great idea.
aida adham
12 December 2010
love it vlad. i've seen sembawang and dungun from malaysia. nice work!
suhendri
8 February 2011
your great effort is worth it. it's awesome
TAOYUAN
23 April 2011
Nice!
I'm so happy to see my hometown on it!
r.b
23 July 2011
Amazing work, you have to be russian, gosh!! brilliant!
RD
9 February 2012
Aughhh! You cut right through me in Alaska! Actually, we can set wallpapers to 'Stretch' and have the whole artwork onscreen (without cropping! Ow! ;).
RD
9 February 2012
P.S. Cordova, Alaska is usually spelled with a C (not K ;)).
kiana
9 April 2012
Exciting
mdwm
1 May 2012
nice to see my hometown of Nipawin get some love :)
Chreak
12 October 2012
挺好用的，給人一種進入世界之巔感覺！
Marco
6 January 2013
Compliments, I like this one just as like all of your entire work. I think you are as nice as your drawings!
Merek
4 March 2013
No Davison, in MI...but whatever man...it's cool...
Aparna
30 March 2013
Amazing Idea. I am from a village in India, and of course its not listed here, but since there are LOT of places in the world, most of them not making into any maps, your idea of putting this is great, thank you. This work also reminds me of a favourite quote from Herman Melville"Queequeg was a native of Kovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are."
Angela G.
9 May 2013
So many negative comments! I love the creativity of it and appreciate all your hard work. Thanks Vlad!!
ran
19 September 2013
Thanks!
kikiki
13 March 2014
written is little