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| Subject: | RE: [gislist] Cartography Question for Discussion |
| Date: |
09/02/2003 10:45:02 AM |
| From: |
Sonny Parafina |
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Here are a couple of other suggestions for improving cartographic skills.
Attend one of Tufte's course (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses), you
get all his books in the series and see very up close some of the 500 year
old books in his collection. The lecture encapsulates the main points of
book series with a lot of vivid examples, leaves you inspired.
Try doing cartography manually, it develops your sense of economy when
designing a map or adding cartographic elements. Although software has
marginalized the ability to draw a straight line of consistent width, going
through the process of manually drawing different types of maps (dot
density, isopleth, chloropleth, pie charts, shaded thematic maps, etc) will
develop cartographic design and planning skills.
Look at a lot of bad maps, this helps develop a critical eye.
Unfortunately, there isn't a resource such as "web sites that suck" for
maps. However, the ESRI annual map books do provide a lot of examples that
you can pore over in a compact format.
Here are some classic books on maps and charts, these are out of print but
may be available through your local university via interlibrary loan.
F.J. Monkhouse and H.R. Wilkinson, Maps & Diagrams: Their Compilation and
Construction (Methuen & Co Ltd, 1978)
A.H. Robinson, The Look of Maps, An Examination of Cartographic Design
(Madison, Wisc.,1952)
Regards,
sonny
-----Original Message-----
From: gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com
[mailto:gislist-bounces@lists.thinkburst.com]On Behalf Of
Winyahbaymaps@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 9:08 AM
To: CWeaver@icfconsulting.com: gislist@lists.thinkburst.com
Subject: Re: [gislist] Cartography Question for Discussion
This may sound too obvious, but read as many different types and styles of
maps as you can get your hands on. But not only that, critique them and
think about what they did right (in your opinion) and what you'd have done
differently. Challenge yourself sometime with a project to produce a map
from the same data/subject/purpose four different ways. Color theory classes
are great, but see if you can find a class in perception and cognition or
something similar. Understanding how people see things and how we relate to
what we see is vital to effective cartography. What makes a hot color hot
and cool color cool? How many shades of a single hue can the human eye
distinguish from across a map sheet? Why does an identically sized green dot
on a blue field look smaller than the same sized blue dot on a green field?
Getting inside the head of the intended user is a vital first step to
effective cartography. This is a big reason that - even though I use GIS all
the time - default color schemes like "Bountiful Harvest" scare me. More
often than not they have no particular cognitive or associative value with
the phenomena being mapped. They are just convenient for the cartographer
and so they are all too often used by a GIS-using community that may -
innocently enough - not know any better than to use them.
It sounds like you've already got a great deal of experience, so you're
obviously well on your way. If nothing else, you've already done the most
important thing and that is to recognize the need for continued growth and
development as a mapping professional. Too many who have found their way
into this field (if even by default) don't even realize that they should be
asking the same question and seeking the same development. My hat's off to
you!
Sorry for all the suds out of my soapbox...
Eric
Eric Schmidt
The Winyah Bay Map Company
PO Box 1499
Georgetown, SC 29442
843-240-4826
winyahbaymaps@aol.com
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