Nat Case

Nat Case – Designer

I'm a cartographer, book designer, and print production manager with over 30 years experience, specializing in non-fiction.

Overview

Cartography and information graphics, mostly for non-fiction but I love the challenge of making fictional places look "authentic." Map, photo and illustration research, and cleanup. In conjunction with thes projects, I can also provide: art direction; book layout and design including cover design and layout of plain text and coffee table books; print management including print and ebook production, and pen and ink illustration.

Clients have included university presses and trade publishers; individual scholars and writers; and non-profits and companies large and small. I spent 22 years as head of production (head cartographer) for Hedberg Maps, Inc., a map publishing company, with more than 1000 projects under my belt there.

I especially love graphically challenging puzzles and helping clients clarify and resolve them, and getting to sink my teeth into graphic research on a topic I haven't tackled before. I have a particular affinity for imitating late 19th and early 20th century map styles, but most of my work is in a contemporary style, and I can work with clients on other historical styles (I am often frustrated by anachronistic use of historical styles: they didn't have copperplate engraving in the Viking era, people!)

I largely work in Adobe Illustrator, using QGIS and MaPublisher to edit and process geodata. I use Adobe InDesign for layout. Deliverables can be in PDF, EPS, AI, or a variety of other formats—I have a client I design artwork in CAD to be cut out of big sheets of steel, and another who printed my map on a football-field-sized piece of billboard vinyl and laid it on the pedestrian plaza of Rockefeller Center...

I am happy to talk through projects in some detail with clients; I want to get the project clearly laid out before committing to it, and a conversation is usually the best way to do this.
Services
Non-Fiction
Architecture Art Design Education & Reference History Travel
Fiction
Historical Fiction
Languages
English

Work experience

Self-employed

May, 2013 — Present

Map and infographic production, and geodata research and development.

Hedberg Maps, Inc.

Jan, 1994 — May, 2013 (over 19 years)

Co-founder, chief cartographer, and print manager. Created or managed over 1000 published and contract projects, including folded and laminated maps, book illustrations, atlases, brochures, and maps for promotional use.

Portfolio

Would you defy a king's command to prevent your only daughter from marrying into the family you most despise?
Made with Reedsy
A Man of Honor, or Horatio's Confessions

Nelson, J. A.

Made with Reedsy
The Last Lion of Karkov

Griffin, Dale

Made with Reedsy
The Hard Way: From Cairo to Cape Town

Harris, Christian

Over 200 years of Adirondack history seen through the lens of one plot of land. Fifty Acres of Beach and Wood chronicles the lives of iconic characters from Adirondack history whose footprints have graced the shores of Indian Point on Raquette Lake. Discover t... read more
From Silk to Silicon

Jeffrey E. Garten

The story of globalization, the most powerful force in history, as told through the life and times of ten people who changed the world by their singular, spectacular accomplishments.This is the first book to look at the history of globalization through the len... read more
"Buffalo Man" is serious fun. It is about a giant child’s growing body and awakening mind. In the spirit of Rabelais and Swift, "Buffalo Man" is the story of a Gargantuan child, aptly nicknamed “Gar”—who was born out of the sky in 1848. He lands in the pasture... read more
From Fayetteville, Little Rock, and Hot Springs to Jonesboro, El Dorado, Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and scores of places in between, the latest volume in the Buildings of the United States series provides the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date guid... read more
Inspired Maps: It's the Gift that Keeps on Giving! You know the feeling of anticipation, excitement and wonder you experience as you open a gift? This is the experience that awaits you each time you scratch off your travels on your Inspired Maps World Reveal M... read more
Medieval London, like all premodern cities, had a largely immigrant population-only a small proportion of the inhabitants were citizens-and the newly arrived needed to be taught the civic culture of the city in order for that city to function peacefully. Ritua... read more
"New Orleans isn’t like other cities," Stella tells her sister Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Cradled in the crescent of the Mississippi River and surrounded by water, the city has faced numerous challenges since its founding ... read more
A lavishly illustrated manuscript from the eighteenth century now being published for the first time, Thomas Hammond's memoirs are a major discovery. Hammond was a self-educated but remarkably gifted writer with a knack for seizing unlikely opportunities for a... read more
The story of white flight and the neglect of black urban neighborhoods has been well told by urban historians in recent decades. Yet much of this scholarship has downplayed black agency and tended to portray African Americans as victims of structural forces be... read more
Locates and indexes more than 1,400 four-year schools in the US and Canada. Inclusion of schools on the map was based on a variety of criteria, including size; proportion of student body from out of region; national prominence in specialized fields; in major s... read more
Come with us as we walk he alleys and back roads of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, following in the footsteps of Bob dylan and Liberace, meeting master cheesemakers, dining in the Boundary Waters, interrogating ice cream truck drivers and more. Maps and illust... read more
Heather Meeker’s Open Source for Business is a practical, readable guide to help businesspeople, engineers, and lawyers understand open source software licensing. Based on the author’s twenty years as an attorney working at the crossroads of intellectual prope... read more
The first complete map of the world's most famous shipwreck. The two-sided full-color infographic map unfolds to 39" x 26". The map side illustrates the course of the Titanic and her rescue ships as well as pre- and post-disaster shipping lanes. Deep-ocean dia... read more
When Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948 by an assassin's bullet, the most potent legacy he left to the world was the technique of satyagraha (literally, holding on to the Truth). His "experiments with Truth" were far from complete at the time of his death, but he had... read more
The Body of God

D Dennis Hudson

This book is the crowning achievement of the remarkable scholar D. Dennis Hudson, bringing together the results of a lifetime of interdisciplinary study of south Indian Hinduism. The book is a finely detailed examination of a virtually unstudied Tamil Hindu te... read more

Nat has 20 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Gwen G.

Gwen G.

Aug, 2024

Nat delivered exactly what I was hoping for. It looks amazing. He was so easy to communicate with, professional, open and honest, and mainly just did excellent work. I definitely hope to work with him again if I have future projects.
Sean F.

Sean F.

Dec, 2023

Nat was very flexible and tolerated my indecision and inexperience at this. I see him as a bridge between the fog of the minds eye and the page for the maps I needed. This was my first collaboration with Nat and I'm already readying my next.
Nat C.
Sean was great to work with. He says indecision, I say attention to details: he know exactly what he wanted on the maps, in terms of spelling and location. And he was very easy to work with in term...
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Steve H.

Steve H.

Oct, 2023

Nat responded to my request immediately and provided some great ideas on how he would approach creating a realistic map for a YA horror novel set in the 1960s. The goal wasn't just a map but something that would help set the mood and enhance the story. We nailed down the concept in a few emails. He started the project right on time and kept up regular communications throughout, with questions a...
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Nat C.
I loved working on this project. Getting to know the Las Vegas of 55 years ago, and show just enough of it to get that character of the edge of the desert into the map was a lot of fun. Steve was r...
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Janice S.

Janice S.

Aug, 2023

Nat Case is skillful and professional. He was a pleasure to work with, and his maps will really enhance my book.
Melissa G.

Melissa G.

May, 2023

Nat was great to work with and gave my book just what it needed to delight my readers.

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