Comments on: A Discourse on Map Pins and Pinnage

By: Maps elsewhere (1) | patrickcain.ca

Maps elsewhere (1) | patrickcain.ca — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 16:08:25 +0000

[...] the Making Maps blog has a post on map pins, which it seems have always posed graphic design [...]

By: Map Pinning Boston | Bostonography

Map Pinning Boston | Bostonography — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:36:30 +0000

[...] In Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (1919), Willard Brinton, who has been discussed in two Making Maps posts, offered up a somewhat lengthy description of a do-it-yourself approach to building a [...]

By: A Bit More on Map Pins « Making Maps: DIY Cartography

A Bit More on Map Pins « Making Maps: DIY Cartography — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:17:00 +0000

[...] I compiled a previous post entitled “A Discourse on Map Pins and Pinnage,” largely based on Willard C. Brinton’s Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (1914) I rather [...]

By: Zaratustra

Zaratustra — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:43:18 +0000

MIT would have just defined a pin color for each power of 2 (black = 1, brown = 2, red = 4, orange = 8, etc) and pinned them together to define larger amounts.

By: Joyce

Joyce — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 21:16:35 +0000

An alternative to piano wire, should one find oneself without, is a bicycle spoke snipped to length; upon which the requisite number of children’s beads (you know the kind, that they pile onto pipe cleaners to make those mother’s day bracelets?) can be strung. Each color can be coded to represent categories, e.g. green = 10; red = 5; or blue = boy and pink = girl (like in the Game of Life)…
Honestly, I miss paper maps…

By: Pushpins: What do(n’t) they mean? « Tim Wallace

Pushpins: What do(n’t) they mean? « Tim Wallace — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:31:51 +0000

[...] by Willard Brinton in his 1914 work Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts – head to Making Maps for an excellent discussion of this work.) Device for Inserting Map Tacks [...]

By: Tim Wallace

Tim Wallace — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:55:47 +0000

Nice post. I particularly enjoy the awkwardness of this transition from physical to digital for the map pin. Back in the day, a map-reader would see a pin unto itself. There was no confusing where the map ended and map pin began. The pin was placed on a map that had other point symbols; these symbols were easily (both physically and cognitively) distinguished from the points located with pins. Now – with the physical/graphical difference between map pin and point symbol blurred – reading a user-generated Google or Bing map involves some decoding of map pins and other point symbols.

Point symbols have long been a kind of cognitive place maker. If you have not been to a place, you check out a map. If the map has some symbols on it for various points of interest (municipal buildings indicated by a simplified Acropolis, restaurants by the fork and knife, hotels by a bed, etc), you start to develop a mental image of the place without having ever visited. In this case, on a digital map, what does the pushpin represent? The map-maker has to be pretty clear in explaining what the pins represent, or we could all end up imagining – whether we believe it or not – Bartholl’s work as real… or some crazy post-apocalyptic scene like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alejomalia/4970267331/in/set-72157624921303688/lightbox/