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Archive for the ‘04 Map-Making Tools’ Category

Rethinking Maps

Posted in 01 What's A Map?, 04 Map-Making Tools, 09 Map Symbolization, 13 Multimedia Mapping, Deep Map Thoughts, Map Books, Map Cartoons, Map Police, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Lukewarm off the presses, a tome chock full of lofty thoughts on maps and mapping. The blurb about Rethinking Maps, edited by Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, and Chris Perkins (Routledge 2009), sez:
Maps are changing. They have become important and fashionable once more. Rethinking Maps brings together leading researchers to explore how maps are being rethought, [...]

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Making Advocacy & Humanitarian Maps [updated]

Posted in 01 What's A Map?, 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 04 Map-Making Tools, Advocacy Maps, Deep Map Thoughts, Map Books, tagged , , , , , , , on June 6, 2009 | 7 Comments »

When Bill Bunge mapped out the locations of car/pedestrian collisions in Detroit (Detroit Geographical Expedition, 1968) he and the map were advocating a way of thinking about what was happening to the black community in Detroit – and advocating for change.
All maps advocate.
To advocate means to “to speak or write in favor of; support or [...]

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Google Maps Kills Bambi

Posted in 04 Map-Making Tools, Maps Kill, tagged , , on February 1, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Making maps kills baby animals!
Ok, they are claiming the frightened yet adorable faun fawn didn’t die.
A car making images for Google Map’s Street View wacked a faun fawn in upstate New York.
…As some people have noticed, one of our Street View cars hit a deer while driving on a rural road in upstate New York. [...]

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Drawing Maps: Africa, ca. 1900

Posted in 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 04 Map-Making Tools, Map Cartoons, Map History, tagged , , , , , 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 one.
2. [...]

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Making Maps with a Typewriter

Posted in 04 Map-Making Tools, 09 Map Symbolization, 10 Type on Maps, Map History on September 12, 2007 | 1 Comment »

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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Animated Maps in Google Earth

Posted in 03 Mappable Data, 04 Map-Making Tools, 13 Multimedia Mapping on July 31, 2007 | 4 Comments »

Google Earth can display geographic data with a time component, and thus show animated maps. Animated mapping has garnered much attention among cartographers in the last decade.
I created a few Google Earth animated choropleth (literally, area-filling) maps of population change in Ohio. One map shows total population by county from 1900 to 2006. [...]

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State of the Map

Posted in 04 Map-Making Tools on July 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

A wiki for the State of the Map Conference (14-15 July ‘07 in Manchester, UK) links to a series of presentations (audio, and sometimes slides) on map related topics. Titles include “This Mapping Stuff Could Really Take Off,” “Why Mash-ups Suck (and Cartography Matters),” “Bringing Maps to Life,” “20 Years of Web Mapping,” and [...]

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Map Police Review: the MLA Language Map of the US

Posted in 03 Mappable Data, 04 Map-Making Tools, 08 Generalization & Classification, 12 Finishing Your Map, Map Police on July 9, 2007 | 1 Comment »

The proliferation of mapping sites on the web provides ample fodder for critique by the map police (cartographic insiders). I usually feel a bit bad whining about the cartographic limitations of such sites. Cartographers have a history of obsessing with rules and such obsession has, arguably, limited creativity and undermined innovations. [...]

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