Professional Geographer

I’m pleased to announce the launch of Mapdiva, LLC, a partnership among Graham Cox and Jill Saligoe-Simmel, to develop Ortelius™ – powerful map illustration software for the MacOS. Ortelius™ is characterized by its ease of use and beautiful graphics capabilities for which Macs are known. Our new company anticipates the release Ortelius™ (Standard Edition) in the first quarter of 2009. A Professional Edition will be released a bit later with some sweet higher-end functionality.

Appalachian Trail Map

How did you come to be a mapper? Most geographers I know say they fell in love with maps at an early age.  They were maps that were engaging, enthralling… that drew your in.  Remember the lessons of your youth as you embark on your next mapping project.  A time-honored tradition in cartography is to examine great examples of existing maps to get ideas and inspiration. Students of cartography will use their Inspiration Folder to collect several different types of maps by different cartographers, categorized by major theme and/or style.

Understand that purpose will drive your selection of map type and existing maps help the creative process.  Once a map type has been determined, the cartographer should review examples of similar map types with similar purposes.  The objective is to allow ones self to be led by example (“How has this subject matter been treated by others?”) and inspire creativity.  An inspiration folder packed with examples of your own and others’ work will serve two purposes: 1. Provide fodder for practicing Map Impact Evaluation - learning to examine maps with a critical eye towards good design, and 2. Help get those creative juices flowing!

Sketch map figure from Slocum 2005

Hand-drawn sketching plays an important role in the digital arts. The larger a project is, and the more concepts a client will need to see, the more sketching will prove its worth in your design process. Consider using rough sketches for composition or layout options in your next project. Or push yourself to do a handful of thumbnail sketches before firing up your cartography software of choice. Create ten well thought out map design options (not seven to make three look good).  Select three and refine each.  Select one for final design.

In Role of Sketching in the Design Process, Sean Hodge discusses sketching for rapid concept development in traditional design.  This same process should be considered in cartography.

Example Map by XNR Productions

Those who design maps for use by others engage in a specialized form of communication.  They create images to represent physical and phenomena in three-dimensional space, but they create them on two-dimensional surfaces. To do this effectively, a cartographer must understand not only the phenomena on which the maps are based, but also how to work with them to communicate information to others.  No amount of skill with computer software can rescue a map that displays a lack of understanding of the cartographic design process.

Cartography is a PROCESS, thus should follow a well thought out sequence of steps from conception to finished product. “So, what exactly are your intentions?” Know how the map is intended to be used at the beginning of your project. What is the presentation media? e.g., print, projected, web. What is the size? Is it interactive? How often does it need updating? Show examples of how you would create the same map differently depending on the presentation format.

PROCESS - A process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of changes of properties or attributes of an object or system. More precisely, and from the most general systemic perspective, every process is representable as a particular trajectory (or part thereof) in a system’s phase space. (adapted from Wikipedia)

A map must be designed foremost with consideration to the purpose, the audience and its needs. In order to convey the message of the map, the creator must design it in a manner which will aid the reader in the overall understanding of its purpose.

What is your first step when someone asks, “Can you make me a map of…?“  Here are some questions you should ask (of your client and yourself) during the cartographic design process. It is recommended you make your own process list and format it as a form that you can re-use with each new project:

Purpose

• Why are you making your map?
• Who is your audience?
• Primary audience:
• Secondary audience:
• Expert or non-expert?
• Busy or motivated?
• Able or disabled?
• Other comments:
• What should the map assert?
• What do you want to communicate?

Data

• What data are needed?
• Existing or new?
• Sources?
• Is field data collection required?
• Is analysis required?
• Do you need to convert/geocode data?
• Are there copyright issues?
• Age of data?
• Is there a budget for the data?

Tools

• What tools will you use?
• Other comments:

Design

• What is the geographic framework?
• Layout?
• Will it be coordinated with other text? Or stand-alone?
• Intellectual & visual hierarchies?
• Map generalization and classification to be used?
• Map symbolization?
• Are there existing standards that must be followed?
• New symbols to be created?
• Type / font(s) to be used?
• Use of color or black & white?
• Existing color scheme?
• Other comments:

Media

• What is the final medium? (paper, poster, projected, Internet, interactive, computer monitor, other)
• Resolution / scale?
• Viewing distance?
• Requirements for final file formats?

Evaluation and Acceptance

• Who will approve the finished map?
• What are the time constraints?
• What is the budget?
• Other comments:

Thanks to john krygier | denis wood, authors of making maps:a visual guide to map design for gis for their inspiring insight in the chapter “Why are you Making your Map?”

ScapeToad is an interesting, free, stand-alone cartogram software for Mac, Windows (and available platform independent). ScapeToad 1.1 is available for download under a GPL license.

Classical thematic mapping displays spatial patterns of theme or series data depicted on familiar reference maps of standard land-area polygons, which are typically distorted only by the selected projection. A cartogram is a map in which some thematic mapping variable – such as travel time or Gross National Product – is substituted for land area. The geometry or space of the map is distorted in order to convey the information of this alternate variable. There are two main types of cartograms: area and distance cartograms. To see examples, WorldMapper.org provides a nice collection of cartograms.

(from the ScapeToad website) “The visualization of social phenomena through classical thematic mapping often leads to unsatisfying representations… Cartograms are a well-known technique used to compensate for this inconvenience by breaking the link between statistical regions and their topographical areas. Consequently, this liberates one visual variable (that of polygon size) for a more relevant use, such as the representation of the relative social importance of these regions (usually measured by the size of their populations), while leaving intact their topological relations.”

The Organic City is an interesting and successful application of community blogging (using WordPress) and flash-based mapping (Worldkit). Created in 2006 by the combined efforts of Seamus Byrne and Sarah Mattern, students in CSU East Bay’s Multimedia Graduate Program.

Organic City is a collaborative digital storyworld centered on the downtown Oakland areas surrounding Lake Merritt. The interactive map is a gateway to location-based stories told by local community members. The map is annotated with storypoints. Roll your mouse over a storypoint to display the title and author of a story. Click on a point to read a story. You can navigate the map using the in (+) and out (-) magnifying glasses and the directional arrows.

Using Storybase Filters
You can also access stories in the storybase by using the filters on this page. You can view stories by genre, title, author, or date. You can also use the search form in the menu bar above to filter the storybase by keywords.

A classical challenge for the cartographer is how to present and clearly communicate large quantities of information to their intended audience. Web mapping has opened new possibilities for creative solutions, but arguably effective presentation techniques are still few and far between. Watersheds present a perfect example of data intensive landscapes paired with the need to convey vast amounts of information to the general public.

In 2003, Chesapeake Bay “Watershed Profiles” was an effective interactive map for general public exploration.  While some may consider it less sophisticated by todays web-map standards, there are features I still love and rarely see incorporated in interactive maps today. For example, as the user drills down, the maps change in detail and scale, and the well selected graphs and charts are automatically updated to reflect the sub-watershed view. Users can navigate among tabs to explore landscape, demographics, water quality, and more. The map view/scale remains consistent when users navigates among the tabs.

Its a good example for creators of interactive maps in which a lot of data need to be conveyed to a public audience.

While the Watershed Profiles is not currently available, I managed to find a screen shot of the site from my own archives.

Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth. The primary data source is UNdata.

The engine returns a KMZ file that you can open in Google Earth or download to your computer.

MapTube Big Mac Index

MapTube is a free resource for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online. Created by UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, users can select any number of maps to overlay and view.

Beautiful example of interactivity - clean map interface and intuitive design.

This map was created at the UW-Madison Cartography Lab by Rob Roth, Andy Woodruff, Joel Przybylowski under the supervision of Professor Bill Cronon and Professor Mark Harrower. Melanie McCalmont assisted with info window text and image production. Production: May-November 2006