“In the morning they come out with queer-looking eyes…” The above map represents one ward of New York City – the Eleventh. The saloons as put upon this map were ascertained by the reporter of the Christian Union by actual count. The saloons are largely beer saloons: for the base of the population is German, [...]
Archive for the ‘02 Why Are You Making Your Map?’ Category
A Map of Beerdom – New York, 11th Ward, 1885
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 03 Mappable Data, Advocacy Maps, Map History, tagged Advocacy Maps, Beer Maps, German Ethnic Maps, History of Cartography, statistical maps, Temperance Maps, thematic maps on January 27, 2009 | 1 Comment »
New Book: The Natures of Maps by Wood & Fels
Posted in 01 What's A Map?, 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 03 Mappable Data, Advocacy Maps, Deep Map Thoughts, Map Books, Map History, tagged Cartographic Design, Cartographic Theory, Cartography & Nature, Critical Theory, Geography Theory, Map Design, Map Theory, Maps & Nature, Propositional Logic on December 23, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Denis Wood & John Fels’ new book The Natures of Maps is available now from the University of Chicago Press and many other sources. The lowest price I can find at this time is $29 (at Buy.com). Denis is, of course, co-author of the Making Maps book. The book is big – almost a foot [...]
Drawing Maps: Africa, ca. 1900
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 04 Map-Making Tools, Map Cartoons, Map History, tagged Africa Maps, Amusing Geography, Cartoon Maps, Drawing Maps, History of Cartography, Making Maps on October 3, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Drawing maps used to be a big part of the geography curriculum in the U.S. One guide for students, published in 1900, is Schutze’s Amusing Geography and System of Map Drawing by Lenore Schutze. Tips for Africa, “The Skull” as Schutze sees it: 1. Cut a square into four smaller squares, and erase the southwest [...]
Mapping the Failure of the Iraq “Surge”
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 03 Mappable Data, Advocacy Maps, tagged Counter Mapping, Iraq Surge, Night-time Light Maps, Propositional Maps, Protest Mapping, Satellite Imagery on September 30, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Making maps to counter prevailing assumptions and beliefs is a well established tradition. Counter mapping, radical mapping, protest mapping … the map proposes an alternative. Bolstered by its authoritative aura, the map can be quite convincing. Geographers John Agnew, Thomas Gillespie, and Jorge Gonzalez, with Political Scientist Brian Min (all of UCLA) propose an alternative [...]
American Maps Are Bad
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 12 Finishing Your Map, Bad Maps, Map History, tagged Bad Maps, Cartography, maps, Wall maps on March 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From the New York Times, August 2, 1892: American Maps Are Bad “It is doubtful,” says Mr. Jacques W. Redway, in an article on the projection of maps in the Proceedings of the Engineering Club of this city. “if anything short of a special act of Providence could give birth to a more beastly specimen [...]
More Principles of Map Design
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 | 10 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 [...]
Denis Wood: A Narrative Atlas of Boylan Heights
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 03 Mappable Data, 09 Map Symbolization, Maps Made, tagged maps, narrative, place, psychogeography on January 10, 2008 | 20 Comments »
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 [...]
Subversive Cartographies
Posted in 01 What's A Map?, 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, Deep Map Thoughts on January 3, 2008 | 4 Comments »
What are subversive cartographies? This issue is addressed a series of presentations organized by Chris Perkins (University of Manchester) and Jörn Seemann (Louisiana State University) for the upcoming 2008 Association of American Geographers meeting (Boston, April 15-19 2008). “To be subversive, is to wish to overthrow, destroy or undermine the principles of established orders. As [...]
Making Flat Earth Globes
Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 05 Geographic Framework, Maps Made, unMaking Maps on September 19, 2007 | 22 Comments »
What if the world was spherical, but it didn’t matter? Most of you have been unable to avoid the flat-earth kerfuffle on the day-time talk show The View. On a recent episode one of the hosts, Sherri Shepherd, said she doesn’t believe the theory of evolution. Whoopi Goldberg, also a host, asked Shepherd “Is the [...]