High Alpine font by Sarah Bell

The High Alpine typeface is available now!

Aug 18, 2021Sarah BellFontsfont, high alpine, typeface

High Alpine Semibold has an unapologetically high ascender with no accompanying adjustment to the x-height. The descender was kept rather short as well, allowing uppercase to maintain its towering command. For moments when you designers feel like reaching ultimate heights, I’ve added many alternative characters; uppercase crossbarred characters have alternatives with daringly high crossbars, and stemmed lowercase characters have longer-stemmed alternatives. Many further glyphs are included with this font to accommodate multiple languages.

A Glimpse of the USPS Landscape with Maps

Oct 14, 2020Sarah BellCartographyadobe illustrator, cartography, locations, map, nacis, post office, usps

By the time I publish this, I will have just finished presenting at the 40th annual North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) conference. NACIS is a large community of map enthusiasts who meet once a year to share and learn about cartography projects. This year’s conference is being held virtually due to the current pandemic crisis.

The Font is Ready! BellTopo Sans Fonts Design Complete

Sep 14, 2020Sarah Bell2 CommentsFontsbell, belltopo, cartography, font, free, sans, topo, typeface, typography, usgs

About the BellTopo Sans Font I designed the BellTopo Sans font, originally inspired by the typefaces on the antique U.S.G.S. maps of the late 1800s and early 1900s. To read more about the inspiration for BellTopo Sans, read the first post I wrote about it when the font was in beta. The font has undergone

Typography for Topography: BellTopo Sans Typeface & Free Font

Feb 23, 2020Sarah Bell32 CommentsFontsbelltopo

While making my own USGS-inspired maps, my search never returned the exact type of font I was looking for. The fruitless search was serendipitous however, because it provided the push to make my own. It was designed for map labels that are no larger than 80-100pt, but usually much smaller. I decided to name it BellTopo Sans with the plan to create a serif version.

Video is up! Colored Pencil Hillshade

Nov 7, 2019Sarah BellUncategorizedcartography, drawing mountains, hand drawn hillshade, mountains, north cascades, shaded relief

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) holds a marvelous annual conference, and this year’s was in Tacoma, Washington just 90 minutes down the road from my house. I gave a talk on the techniques I use to draw mountain topography with colored pencils. The first few minutes give a little background of my PNW

Adobe MAX 2019: Mapping

Nov 5, 2019Sarah BellUncategorizedadobe max, cartography, mapping, resources, tutorial

By the time you are reading this, my colleague John Nelson and I will have presented to a bunch of fantastic creatives at Adobe MAX 2019 about making maps as designers. Designers make gorgeous maps, because oftentimes they don’t confine themselves to super strict ideas of what a map should look like. Plus, well… they’re

A Happy Map

Nov 5, 2019Sarah BellUncategorizedgnis

Making maps is fun. As a cartographer, I’m biased to feel this way. Still, when I tell people that map-making is my career, a lot of people respond with “I love maps!” so I am not alone in realizing maps’ awesomeness. At the upcoming Adobe MAX 2019 conference I will be presenting alongside my colleague

Drawing Color Hillshade: A tutorial (with time lapse videos)

Oct 24, 2019Sarah Bell1 CommentUncategorizedcartography, color hillshade, colored pencil map, hand-drawn, hillshade, hypsometric, shaded relief

Last year I shared my technique for drawing hillshade with graphite (pencil). Since then, I have explored a few different methods for drawing color hillshade. I will be sharing one of those methods in this post. This method uses those graphite drawings as the base, or the starting point. So to get started, make sure

Welcome to my fresh new website

Oct 12, 2019Sarah BellUncategorized

It is October 2019, and time to begin a new website. You’re here when this page is brand new! Super fresh (‘fresh’ sounds more exciting than under development’). I’m excited about it. Next week, I will be posting a tutorial for steps to draw hand-drawn hillshade maps with colored pencils, and I wanted to get

Sarah Bell Maps

Cartography is design

Author Archives: Sarah Bell