Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

I found this trea­sure trove of vin­tage inspi­ra­tion very ran­domly while doing research for a new project, and I’m so glad I did. The Rumsey Collection is a huge col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal maps — and that really is an under­state­ment. The 150,000 maps are mostly rare 18^th and 19^th cen­tury maps of North and South America, though there are oth­ers from through­out the world, plus globes, pocket maps, mar­itime charts and more. It is incred­i­bly easy to get lost for hours on this site, click­ing from one thing to the next — there are just so many amaz­ing things to see.

The collection’s site also uses unique tech­nol­ogy that allows the viewer to exam­ine the minute details of each map; and as another bonus, the maps can also be pur­chased as prints in var­i­ous sizes.