Lately the posts here have been more about the latest goings-on in the GIS world and GIS analysis/data rather than cartographic design principles. Thinking about this today, I realized it is because I’m a bit perplexed about how to modify traditional cartography for digital media. But that’s not the right way to think about it. Even those who are designing maps for digital presentations (e.g., slide shows), interactive web maps, smaller device apps, and the like, still need to know fundamentals of:
- Color
- Text
- Arrangement,
- Figure-ground,
- Hierarchy,
- Placement,
- Purpose,
- Audience, and
- Peer-review.
Furthermore, less major subjects such as isolines, terrain depiction, road casing, for example, still remain important as well. Only now you have to know how to program these things rather than draw them. 
We saw it in this great Google maps analysis where, despite the fact that it is an online map, it is extremely sophisticated. Think about all the things they are able to do like dynamically “clearing” an area of labels around a major city to provide a visual distinction between cities and their surroundings. If anything, the art and science of cartography has only grown more complex.
Your thoughts???
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