Making Maps: DIY Cartography

And now… what at least a dozen of you have been waiting for…

Denis and I spent quite a bit of time rethinking significant parts of the second edition of Making Maps in several intense work sessions in Columbus, Ohio and Raleigh, North Carolina. Fists were pounded upon tables, changes demanded, reservations expressed, ideas refined, markers used to blot out the unacceptable and sketches drawn for new sections in the new edition. It was terrible fun.

It explains my lack of posts here at the Making Maps blog.

While the overall design of the book remains consistent with the 2nd edition, those of you with a technical bent will appreciate that the 2nd edition was entirely created in Freehand MX and Guilford and I translated the entire book to Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for the 3rd edition. You have no idea how much trouble that was.

After Denis and I settled the changes and updates, I spent over a year and a half producing the maps, graphics and text for the book, many hundreds of hours of research and production. A significant amount of the work was completed while sitting at my daughter Annabelle’s synchronized swimming practices (11 hours a week!). I can still smell chlorine when I look at the book.

Changes in the 3rd edition of Making Maps include:

• 40+ new pages of content
• expansion of substantive color examples by 25%
• 35+ new, map exemplars throughout book
• changes on over 50% of the pages in the book
• new introductory maps including
  • Jack Kerouac’s hand drawn map he drew while planning On the Road
  • Boris Artzybasheff’s creepy map of global tropical diseases
  • Gwendolyn Warren and Bill Bunge’s famous map of Children’s Traffic Fatalities in Detroit
  • Guy Harold Smith’s Physiographic (and typographic) map of South America
• expansion and split of chapter 9 on map symbolization into two chapters, focusing on map symbols of less and more abstract geographic data
• significant expansion of the graphic novel, extended throughout the book, as an exemplar how making maps can change the world

But that’s not all…

• expanded discussion of when mapping is inappropriate
• updated content on map medium guidelines
• addition of content on viewing distance rules
• expanded discussion of Impact Evaluation with new fracking oil shale example
• expanded discussion of time and mapping, including mapping the future
• addition of content and examples of geodata locational services and privacy
• addition of geoweb concepts including interoperabily, open data layers, tile maps
• extensive refinement and clarification of map projection terminology
• discussion of when map projections don’t matter
• updated data in maps on poverty, hate groups, firearms deaths, election results, African American absence, etc.
• new maps on slavery and lynchings in the US
• expanded discussion with 10 new examples in Ways to Think about Map Symbols section
• new two pages section on symbolizing terrain
• new section on Ways to Think about Map Symbolization Abstraction with new maps on Detroit children traffic fatalities
• reorganization of Color chapter into a more logical progression with a trio of new Voyager maps showing monochrome, two color, and full color examples
• revision, expansion, and updates of More information sections in each chapter
• new map quotes

Despite 40 new pages of material in the book, it is still under 300 pages. No bloat here – no “book junk.”

I’ll post more bits from the book in the coming weeks, months, …

And the book starts thusly…

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Sigma Press, 2013

ISBN 9788997927692

Some of the pages…

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It’s out! Got my copies yesterday. A terrific upgrade from the first edition of the book – larger format, better paper, complete redesign, lots of new content. Shipping from Amazon and other similar sites. Let me know what you think if (when) you get a copy!

A few pre-publication reviews:

James E. Meacham, Senior Research Associate and InfoGraphics Lab Director, Department of Geography, University of Oregon: “Building on their solid first edition, Krygier and Wood have created a new and much richer follow-up. The second edition represents a serious reworking of subject matter and graphics. The book uses extraordinary map exemplars to address the full range of basic cartographic concepts and to demonstrate many subtle and advanced design techniques as well. Addressing current social issues including map agendas, ethics, and democracy, it is the kind of book that will inspire readers and cultivate admiration for the field.”

Paul Longley, Department of Geography, University College London, United Kingdom: “Krygier and Wood’s book should be used by anyone interested in the way the world looks, the way the world works, or the way the world should be. It remains the most accessible yet comprehensive guide of its kind. The second edition meets the needs and expectations of the ‘Google generation’ of map users while remaining true to the guiding principles that govern how maps look, work, and function. The very accessible, extensively illustrated format makes the book easily usable by students at all levels, as well as those taking steps to develop expertise in cartographic design.”

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Q: How does Making Maps relate to GIS software?

A: Making Maps focuses on the mapping side of GIS, or any software that allows you to design and create maps. The examples in the book were not, for the most part, created with desktop GIS software. This is because it is difficult (if not impossible) to achieve (carto)graphic excellence in contemporary GIS software. Most design cartographers who use GIS exit GIS software and design their work in software like Illustrator, Freehand, or Corel Draw. The design capacity of GIS software will undoubtedly improve. Making Maps provides exemplary design and ideals to shoot for. If you can’t do something shown or suggested in Making Maps with the GIS software you happen to be using, complain to the software company, and get a copy of Illustrator, Freehand, or Corel. Such software are not that difficult to learn and will provide you with a multitude of creative design options not available to you in typical GIS software. Your maps, in other words, will be better. A diversity of software for working with geographic information exists, and is evolving and developing on a daily basis. Making Maps defines design guidelines, principles, and exemplars which transcend the diversity (and limitations) of constantly evolving GIS software.

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Q: Making Maps is an weird cartography book – what were some of the ideas behind its creation?

A: A NACIS Conference (Oct. 12-15 in Salt Lake City) included a panel of critics (Stuart Allan, George McCleary, Peter Keller, Margaret Pearce) interrogating Cindy Brewer’s new book Designing Better Maps (ESRI Press, 2005) and Making Maps. I prepared a statement about the intent and ideas that shaped the look and content of Making Maps.

Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS: Author’s Intent

When Peter Wissoker (then of Guilford Publications) asked me to write a cartography text, I told him the world did not need another cartography text. The number of academic cartography courses were not growing, and probably declining, despite the explosive growth of GIS. Peter then asked if I liked existing cartography texts, and I said I did not use them in my courses. “So what kind of text would you use, if it existed?” asked he. This question led to Making Maps. I wanted a book that would get readers excited about maps (existing texts are rather languid), I wanted good examples to show why map design matters and how it works (also not found in abundance in existing texts), and I wanted to promote creativity – fundamental to good map design, and difficult to teach. Denis helped to shape and refine the goals and develop the content of the book.

I designed the book like I would design a map. The audience? Cartography courses, maybe as a supplement, GIS courses, certainly as a supplement, and individuals who make maps (or like maps) but don’t have a background in cartography, and don’t want to be academic cartographers. Then what? Coherent concept, a hierarchy of content emphasizing what is important and excising the rest, creative design to grab attention and make a point, all so that the book works as well as possible for its readers. A few key ideas shaped the design of Making Maps:

1. Maps are visual, so make the book visual (rather than textual), to promote visual thinking and creativity, both fundamental to map design. As far as possible, focus each page on maps and arrange text around the maps (rather than the reverse, which is what other texts do). To subsume text and emphasize the maps required a profound generalization of all the words about maps that dominate cartographic texts. We promote maps as a vital way of seeing patterns in data that would not otherwise be evident, and stress that less is better than more. Apply these ideas to a map design text: carefully designed maps, rather than words, used to reveal map design principles.

2. It is impossible to teach map design without good and creative examples, but it helps to have poor examples to contrast with the good to show how and why design matters. Eduard Imhof used this visual approach to the map design process in his classic article on map type, and I applied this idea throughout Making Maps. I also tried to incorporate good and creative design in all the maps in the book, supposing one can learn by seeing.

3. Enthusiasm and excitement about maps abound in a world where maps and the tools to make them proliferate, so design the book to espouse enthusiasm and excitement about maps. Many of the real maps in the book comprise a cartography of affect – hate crimes, AIDS deaths, bombing sprees, hurricane impacts, war deaths, poverty, alcohol, queer geography, projected naked bodies, suicide, radioactive fallout, military targeting maps, spiritual geographies, and aliens. The text and maps were also infused with a ludic sensibility – humor, farce, satire, sarcasm, irony and play. The mystery maps that preface the book and are between chapters encourage playful engagement (what is it?) with maps, their visual form, and the curious things we can map. Engaged emotion and play promote enthusiasm and excitement about maps, and creativity in their design, counter-balancing the stern normative content (rules, regulations, good/poor, do this-not that’s) in Making Maps.

Making Maps covers the basics of maps and map design, although I do believe it to be more sophisticated than it may appear at first glance. I am pondering Making Maps II, or Making More Maps, and what exactly a more “advanced” cartographic design text might look like.

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Q: What tunes did you listen to while making Making Maps?

A: iTunes was essential software for the completion of Making Maps. I have always listened to music while making maps, but have never been able to listen to music while doing other work. Curious. Various and sundry tunes wafted in the background whilst I worked on all the graphics, but a few stand out, mostly because they embody the quirky, hard to pin down qualities I tried to embody in Making Maps. A pair of CDs I have never stopped listening to – since I bought them decades ago – are the last two CDs by Talk Talk, Sprit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991). Best known for its early 1980s start as a Duran Duran wannabe band, Talk Talk mutated into something weird and inexplicable in the late 1980s. While I revisit some of my college-era tunes occasionally, most all sound somewhat dated (and I am not old enough to get nostalgic yet). But not these two Talk Talk cds. A more recent CD that embodies the same spirit (and drummer) as Talk Talk is Bark Psychosis and their recent ///Codename:DustSucker. There is nothing similar about Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis but they are very similar. One more and I will stop: n.Lannon. Now I am not a big fan of folk music. And I am not a big fan of techno. But n.Lannon put them together on Chemical Friends and the outcome (Folktronica, I guess) is irresistible to anyone making hundreds of quirky maps.

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