Posted in 03 Mappable Data, 09 Map Symbolization, Map History, tagged Cartographic Design, Cartography, landform maps, Map Design, map symbols, maps, scenery on maps, terrain maps on April 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Erwin Raisz is among the most creative cartographers of the 20th century, known in particular for his maps of landforms.
In 1931 Raisz outlined and illustrated the methods behind his landform maps, in an article in the Geographical Review (Vol. 21, No. 2, April 1931). Excerpts from the text and graphics in the article are [...]
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Quite a few years ago I wrote an overview article on the use of sound for representing geographic data, including a series of sound variables for mapping I developed. The article was titled “Sound and Geographic Visualization” and was published as a chapter in the now out-of-print book Visualization in Modern Cartography (MacEachren & Taylor [...]
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Wells
Springs
Successful, Unsuccessful
Nonmineral, Mineral
Nonmineral, Mineral, Artesian, Gravity, Artesian, Gravity
Rise, No Rise, Rise, No rise, Cold, Warm, Cold, Cold, Warm, Cold
Flowing, Nonflowing, Flowing, Nonflowing
Those are all the wells and springs…
In general there has been no attempt at uniformity of practice in the delineation on maps of underground water features or of wells or springs… …it now appears [...]
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A cartogram varies the size of geographic areas based on the data values associated with each area. Typical cartograms scale geographic areas to population, GNP, electoral votes, etc.
This “apportionment map,” as creator William B. Bailey (Professor of Political Economy, Yale University) calls it, scales the size of U.S. states to the size of [...]
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Posted in 03 Mappable Data, 09 Map Symbolization, Map History, tagged Cartographic Design, Cartography, Edward Tufte, ethnicity maps, Jacques Bertin, Map Design, map symbols, maps, multivariate, texture, visual variables on February 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Map of New York City, Showing the Distribution of the Principal Nationalities by Sanitary Districts published in Harper’s Weekly (June 1, 1894) using 1890 U.S. Census data.
This map looks great, revealing a substantial amount of information with its intense, juxtaposed patterns.
The textures on the map show the relative amounts of different nationalities (qualitative data) in [...]
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Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 06 Map Layout, 07 Hierarchies, 08 Generalization & Classification, 09 Map Symbolization, Deep Map Thoughts, tagged Cartographic Design, Cartography, Design, Design Principles, Hate Group Maps, Map Design, maps, Run Over Children Maps, Terror Maps on February 5, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Making maps is rife with rules. But following rules does not necessarily produce a great (or even good) map. It may be the implementation of broader design principles that leads to a successful map.
Principles are an intellectual generalization of a broad field of knowledge: a kind of map, in the broadest sense of the word.
They [...]
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Ah, the shingly shore…
William McTaggart, A Shingly Shore, oil on canvas, 1904.
The nature of the coast: steep, flat, cliffy, rocky, sandhills, stony, shingly, sandy, mangrove, mud, gravel, coral, breakers, rubble, unsurveyed.
The nautical chart map symbol for a shingly shore is taken from section A of Chart #1, Nautical chart symbols and abbreviations used by U.S. [...]
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Denis Wood, co-author of Making Maps, has been working on an atlas of the Boylan Heights neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina since the mid 1970s. The atlas, which has never been published in its entirety, is called Dancing and Singing: A Narrative Atlas of Boylan Heights.
Inspired by Bill Bunge’s radical cartography in the 1960s [...]
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Google’s My Maps allows the easy creation of pseudo map mash-ups, where you can map your own data as points, lines, and area symbols with Google Maps as the background.
I wrote about My Maps - basic how-to and some of its limits - in another blog post, Allelopathic Maps & Google’s “My Maps.” [...]
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Map-making has often adapted technologies designed for purposes other than making maps.
I recall Scitex hardware as the state-of-the-art in large format color computer mapping in the early 1980s when I was first learning cartography. Cartography applications were developed when Scitex, its origins in designing and printing textiles, noticed “the similarity between printing large fabric surfaces [...]
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