Spirits of Scotland by Milana Glebova

Whisky is more than just a drink; it's a story of craftsmanship, tradition, and landscapes. In creating this map, I aimed to follow this narrative by combining a precision of geospatial data with a feel of old-fashioned cartography. The project was inspired by a desire to retrace Iain Banks' whisky journey in ‘Raw Spirit’: I grew frustrated with searching for distilleries on low zoom levels of navigation apps and decided to create a map one can leisurely browse through (and maybe even chart a route with a pencil).

Existing distillery maps are often cluttered with numbered icons and oversized legends, forcing readers to decode rather than explore. I chose to rethink this approach by transforming simple leading lines into decorative features, which ultimately took centre stage in the map's aesthetic. Each distillery is anchored by a delicately curved line; together, they flow like the contours of a Glencairn glass, color-coded to their whisky region—Highland’s earthy ocher, Islay’s coastal blue, and so on.

Visually, I wanted to avoid the sterility of digital renders and imitate the warm, velvety feel of vintage mountain maps - I think it suits the untamed Scottish landscape well. To achieve that, I overlaid the land polygon with shaded relief layers colored in a golden-blue gradient, then added a semi-transparent mist to valleys and lowlands depth.