What I've Learned During 13 Years of Mapmaking

1. You're not smarter than time. No reinventing wheels because you're not that good.
2. Just ask. You see a nice map, you see the mapmaker is alive, and you ask them how it happened. You might have a great conversation and find out.
3. If a map needs to look nice, divide work in a grid; each grid cell is your atomic unit of work.
4. Learn about everything else but maps, then use that to make maps. Maps are for the world, not the world for maps.