1028. A Day in the Life–What's It Really Like to Be a Cartographer?

“After graduating with my degree in cartography, I was hired by a former colleague as the first employee of his cartography business, where I literally learned everything about running a business from the ground up. After 5 years I opened my own business and was fortunate that a client from my past business committed to buying my services for at least a year—which financed the whole enterprise. My work is now a nice balance between using my talents as a cartographer and as a businessman who markets top-of-the-line software products and training courses for the cartographic market.”

Hans van der Maarel is a professional cartographer from The Netherlands. He runs his own business, Red Geographics and is a partner in another company, One Stop Map. Red Geographics focuses on map production for a wide range of international clients as well as reselling and supporting software products for the cartographic market. This also involves developing production workflows for clients and offering consultancy and training courses. One Stop Map is a website selling stock digital maps but also takes on custom map production projects, again for a wide range of clients. In his spare time he enjoys cycling and photography (sometimes together).