London Food & Culture

Seen the Map of Every City yet?

It had thousands of retweets and put this "post-it note" artist on the, er, map. We meet him

Map Of Every City
Map Of Every City. Image: Chaz Hutton.

Chaz Hutton is the north London-based artist behind the hit Instagram account @instachaaz, which has nearly 95K followers. Originally from Melbourne, he moved here early last year to “avoid being an adult, while pretending to pursue a career in architecture.” As the @instachaaz tag took off, he decided that drawing things on post-it notes “was a lot easier than drawing entire buildings”, so quit architecture to become a professional “post-it note drawer” instead.

Congrats – your latest map’s been a social media smash. How did it come about?
It was inspired by one I drew for some friends from Melbourne who were visiting. I attempted to do London, but replaced this city’s neighbourhoods with the names of Melbourne ones, so they’d understand what certain areas were like. At that point I realised that the two cities (and presumably a lot of others) all have similar ‘types’ of areas. What’s been surprising though is how many people have confirmed that it fits other cities quite well too.

Charles Hutton.
Chaz Hutton: ‘You tend to get a good feel for areas as you move through them.’

Where do you live and how did that inform the map ?
I’m up in Stoke Newington, and I ride everywhere, so you tend to get a good feel for areas as you move through them. If you travel from say, South Kensington to N16, the urban fabric changes considerably, multiple times and quite quickly. I also, by the way, just like using the term ‘urban fabric’.

Finally, have you created any others?
Yeah, quite a few – you can see them all online. I’ve drawn a lot of maps explaining how to get to people’s houses in the country, I’ve done one of the brain, and I also tried to depict New York once – but then I realised I hardly know the joint.


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To see more of Chaz’ work follow him here, or on Instagram @instachaaz or Twitter @chazhutton

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