For my birthday last year my very thoughtful wife managed to get me this original copy of National Geographic from the month I was born. October 1981. Like most people in my line of work, I love National Geographic for many reasons including the very high standard of information graphics and cartography. So, naturally, I got stuck in to see what their graphics were like back then. So here are some examples. I included some illustration too which all seemed to tie together with the graphics to create a uniform style.
The cover story also turned out to be very interesting. It covered STS-1, the first orbital flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program and also the future of the Space Station. That was also a coincidence and quite special to me as last year, and almost exactly 30 years later, I was working on one of my first major graphics for the SCMP. The final Space Shuttle mission drawing the entire program to a close. Shown in an earlier post.
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| Nice illustration |
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| Graphic showing main parts and basic maneuvers |
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| The planned Space station. Long before ISS |
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| Kennedy Space Centre |
The two illustrations above also serve as an infographic with numbered pointers explaining what the various parts are.
Next up, a few maps. The cartography was still of a very high standard 30 years ago. From three page fold outs to single column locator maps.
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| Fold out map of US and USSR naval presence in the Indian Ocean |
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| Mono lake in California. |
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| Single column migration route map |
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| Everest's Northern Ridge |
And finally another hand drawn graphic about restoration of a Roman facade.
That's it... Hope you enjoyed them.
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