Cartographer's Toolkit

This is the first part of a four part series that supplies design tips for cartographers inspired by landscape design genres for the first three posts: French Formal Garden, English Garden, and Japanese Garden. The fourth post will depart from this by seeking inspiration from the natural (non-cultivated) landscape.

The French Formal Garden is an old style of landscaping that incorporates many elements that are also useful for map design. Three of those important elements are briefly described here; you can explore them further via other sources if you so wish.

1) SYMMETRY In the French Formal Garden, symmetry along a prominent axis is one of the main organizing constructs. In a map design, symmetry can be applied in many ways from the placement of the margin information to the centering of the map itself. In this example, the Garden of Vaux-le-Vicomte illustrates the highly symmetrical placement of elements in the garden. Note the strong axis. The map on the right is an example of centering the geography of the map such that a prominent feature is surrounded in equal parts on all sides with background information. Note the two bodies of water in mostly equal proportions on the top and bottom of the map. Photograph taken by Thomas Henz, map by Matt Rosenberg

2) PERSPECTIVE The use of perspective to create vanishing lines and encourage a sense of elongated space took root in French Formal Gardening in the 17th century. To achieve this, certain tricks were employed such as decreasing the width in an allée of trees, gradually, from one end to the other. In mapping, perspective is used to give a unique bird’s eye view of an area to emphasize topography as well as to create a pseudo-natural appearance. Photography by Dr. Glauboch, map is public domain

3) FOCAL POINT The typical focal point of a French Formal Garden is the main house, a large fountain, or a reflecting pool. It is possible that all three can be used as focal points, with the latter two playing subordinate roles to the main house or castle. In map design, the map is generally the focal point and would, in this case, be “equal” to the house in the French Garden. In order to ensure that the map achieves the main visual spot (while a title may take the penultimate spot), the surrounding map elements need to blend more or less effortlessly into the overall composition in order to maintain a cohesive appearance and thus not take the eyes away from the main map. In this garden example, the garden, while being very visually interesting in its own right, definitely does not take away from the home’s architecture. The map example shows how a well-integrated web map can retain visual focus as long as the auxiliary information is designed similarly to the map itself. Photograph of Chateau d’Azay-le-Ferron by SiefkinDR, map by University of South Carolina