Pier Gustafson

Pier Gustafson is a calligrapher, illustrator, graphic designer and artist. He specializes in customized invitations for weddings and other special events. Often, guests invited to these special events need a map to the location. If you look closely at the the invitation, you can often find a map incorporated into the design, or the map itself is the design. Two examples from Gustafson's map gallery:


Drawn tree branches made up the decorative motif of the invitation and the RSVP card as well as the envelopes. It seems that I needed to include them on the map, too. But rather than simply having them be decorative, I composed them into the actual roadways. (Though I think of myself as a realist, I did bend some botanical laws of nature with highways 12 and 37.)


The owner of a Victorian house planned a grand re-opening celebration after it had gone through extensive historic renovations. An elaborate claw-footed post holds a fringed be-tassled banner containing the text of the invitation. Only after you study it for a moment, do you realize that the post is actually the map directing his guests from Boston.

I recently discovered Pier's work after a return visit to The Hand Drawn Map Association.