Topographic – Page 2 – Navigating the interactive landscape.

Topographic is a blog about navigating the evolving digital landscape. It explores communication, technology, and interactive media from a graphic designer's perspective.

Topographic is run by John Rudolph, the Creative Director at Map Agency, a graphic design studio in Sandy Hook, CT. The articles and projects showcased here are the result of classes taken in the Interactive Media and Communications Graduate program at Quinnipiac University.

Recent Projects

Your Brand's Favorite New Topping

Pepperoni is a super thick display font designed for the four Ps of successful marketing: 1. Pricing, 2. Promotion, 3. Packaging, and 4. Pizza. It contains all 26 uppercase letters and all the punctuation needed for popping out.

Hungry For More?

Make Your Wordmark Work

Our communications landscape is flooded with fonts, so how do you choose a typeface that's going to help your brand stand out? In this article, I explore the difference between typography and lettering in logo design.

See Case Study

Attention Please!

How can designers help brands attract customers without distracting them? In this white paper, I explore the causes of our depleted attention spans, and look at new ways for businesses to harness technology more thoughtfully.

Read White Paper

Upstage Your Newtown Neighbor

Built in 1931, Edmondt Town Hall houses a 500-seat theatre for concerts, theatrical performances, and engaging speakers. I developed a strategic social media campaign to help raise brand awarness of this historic gem.

Watch Presentation

Recent Blogs

Can Simple Animations Spark Big Ideas?

No doubt, we’re innately drawn to stories we can relate to. As with our relationships, both personal and professional, it’s only human nature to seek the familiar. But do we take the same approach with the products we buy and the brands we engage with? According to Donald Miller in, Building a StoryBrand 2.0, businesses don’t just understand our propensity for familiar storytelling, the best ones actually take advantage of it. In exacting detail, Miller explains how every successful story can be broken down into seven precise acts. I was a little disheartened to learn that storytelling is so sequential …

By John

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January 23, 2026

The Rules I Learned While Making a Mockumentary

I used to think that directors like Wes Anderson, Jared Hess, and Spike Jonze simply broke all the rules of filmmaking. Their early work spoke to me in a way that I couldn’t quite describe. Whether it was the deadpan delivery, seemingly mundane sets, or quirky framing, they each introduced a distinct style that many of us had never seen before. Reading & Writing The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, by Tom Schroeppel In retrospect, though, after reading The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, I’ve come to realize that their films didn’t break the rules …

By John

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December 11, 2025

Documentary: Planning to Shoot a Story

Everything I’ve learned about film and video over the past five weeks now needs to come together for a documentary. Most projects of this type take weeks, or event months, to plan and execute. From setting up interviews to shooting b-roll and cutaways, even a short documentary can be a huge undertaking. I’ve got two weeks! With this in mind, I’ve decided to make a “mockumentary” instead. A mockumentary is a genre of film making that showcases fictional events in the style of a documentary. Usually presented as comedy, it’s basically a fake documentary. But, because it uses the conventions …

By John

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December 5, 2025

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Contact

Phone: 203-304-1846
Email: johnrudolph@gmail.com
Instagram: @map.agency