Photograph by Leigh Ann Maze

Rick Derrington and Laura Filice wanted to show the villages that remain in the high-tech Silicon Valley.

Local artist shows charm of 'Silicon Valley villages'

Los Gatos artist did the artwork

By Leigh Ann Maze

Although Silicon Valley is known globally for its rapidly growing high-tech industry, it has managed to retain a few villages that have an intimate, community-oriented atmosphere.

Los Gatos, Saratoga and Willow Glen are featured as the "Villages of Silicon Valley" in a bird's-eye view map recently produced by Rick Derrington and Laura Filice of Willow Glen. The map, which is free to the public, was distributed to participating merchants at the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Businesses, streets, houses, trees and landmarks of the downtown areas are accurately depicted in a colored pen-and-ink rendering, illustrated by artist Rick Williams of Los Gatos.

"I think I captured the spirit of the towns, which was my intent," Williams said.

Derrington, an accounting consultant in Willow Glen, was inspired by a similar map he picked up in 1994 while traveling in Sandpoint, Idaho. "I thought it would be fun to do one in our area," Derrington said. "To capture the mystique of the Silicon Valley and marry that with the concept of villages."

Derrington called the Sandpoint map's publisher, Discovery Maps in Washington State, with his idea. Last January, he became the first person to purchase a franchise of the company, Map Scenes of California. Since then, several others across the country have purchased franchises from the company, mostly in resort destinations, such as Whitefish, Mont. The "Villages of Silicon Valley" map is Derrington's first project, produced with his business partner and fiancée Laura Filice.

Derrington and Filice began pounding the pavement in March, pitching their idea to more than 400 businesses in Saratoga, Los Gatos and Willow Glen. The 115 business that participated, from antique shops to espresso bars to horse stables and vineyards, are illustrated and labeled on the map. They also are described in the alphabetical and categorical listings on the back of the map.

"The businesses that chose to participate were a little more adventurous than those that chose to wait and see how successful the map would be," Filice said.

Filice and Derrington routinely visit the advertising merchants to supply them with new maps. So far, 12,000 of the 50,000 maps printed have been distributed. Derrington and Filice are working on an updated version, which will be published next Thanksgiving, and they hope to reprint the map every year. Their next project will be a map of the Santa Cruz and Capitola villages.

The free map was distributed to participating businesses and to several San Jose locations as well, including the Fairmont Hotel, the Tech Museum of Innovation and the Winchester Mystery House. "It is meant to benefit residents and visitors by providing them with an illustrated business guide, and benefit business by getting their names out in the community," Derrington said.

In addition to downtown businesses and streets, the map depicts parking structures and recreation areas, such as the Los Gatos Creek Trail and some local wineries.

The detailed illustration took Williams about three months to complete. He first spent about two weeks taking photos of the more than 100 buildings that had to be drawn. From the photos, and input from the map producers, he created the cartoon-like pen-and-ink design, which was then digitized and colored on a computer.

"This is only the beginning," Filice said of the "Villages of Silicon Valley" map. "But I think this is something that's going to be a permanent fixture around here and develop further as time goes on."

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