Cartographer's Toolkit

Today I wound up announcing on twitter a bit of information about my upcoming book. Here’s some more on that subject:

Tentative title: Cartographer’s Toolkit

Feedback on the use of the word “toolkit” is welcomed. There’s a definition on wikipedia for this word that states, “set of basic building units for graphical user interfaces,” and that is not the way in which the word is meant in this book. Hopefully the readers will understand that it is just a general term for a book of useful items that can be readily incorporated into their map-making processes.

Those items are:
1) Colors
2) Typography
3) Map Composition Patterns

Yes, you guessed it: the colors and typography portions of the book will be very similar to the ebooks that I sell on these subjects. The difference is that they have been reformatted for a full-color print book that can be distributed on all the major channels. The aim has always been to get everyone who makes maps the tools they need to make them better. Widening the distribution to Amazon and other outlets gets closer to that goal.

The third chapter is something that, to the best of my knowledge, is the very first time that “patterns” have been created for the cartography field. The word “pattern” is used in this book in the same way that it is used in software design. You could probably substitute the word “type” as in “Map Composition Types” for the chapter except that a few of the patterns aren’t really types of maps but rather, say, a certain way of making a map. More specifics on this will probably be included in an upcoming post.

We are hoping to get the book out to the printer sometime in April. For now, I can show off one of the double-page proofs of the Typography chapter, albeit in a low resolution (this is just a page proof and is subject to change):

To those who have been asking: yes, this book will be self-published. This effort, however, has not been a solo one. Big kudos go to the great book designer Erik Jacobson of Longfeather Book Design and all those amazing cartographers who’s work will be featured in the book (to be listed in an upcoming post), and to all those who have thus far reviewed various sections of the book, and to those who are on-board to review the entire book once the complete proofs are done.

I’ll definitely be posting more about the book as we gear up for the final push.