Meet Venna, a Vizag-based illustrator weaving magic with cartography

As humans, our memories are attached to what we see and sense. While photographs are the conventional souvenirs that take you back to that particular place and moment, the now trending art of cartography will take you right to the coordinates. We use maps almost every day, majorly for navigation. Be it the regular route to your school or to the place where you first met your special someone, you can now frame that memory with personalised maps. Cartography is the art of graphically representing maps. Owing to its personal and unique style of storing memories, there is a growing demand for this new form of art over the internet. VennaIllustrations from Vizag delivers such artwork.

Venna Sri Hari Kanth, a self-taught cartographer, from Vizag, who is also an urban designer and a graduate from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, makes such customised digital maps of various major cities of the country. He started by making full designs of Kolkata city, as a part of his course, and later, out of his interest in mapping he made designs of other cities which he traveled. This ventured as a business named VennaIllustrations during the lockdown in July.

He regards his work as creating a lifetime memory. Based on the interests and choices of the clients, he makes aesthetic maps of the land, routes, or specific points with which they have a personal connection.

The youngster’s notable works include maps of major cities such as Delhi, Kochi, Mumbai, and Kozhikode, illustrations of Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga peaks, and 3 dimensional and topographic maps. Fetching him recognition were his illustrations of the IPL cities, with the respective franchise’s iconic players overlaying the maps.

He taught himself the art of cartography, which requires a great amount of patience and detail. “There is a lot of hard work goes into the process of making one. Being personal and unique many may not understand the relevance of the map hanging in one’s living room, but it sure does strike a happy memory for my clients”, says the young artist.