What’s limiting us when it comes to cartography? Well, A LOT OF THINGS. But here’s one I haven’t talked about much on the blog:
Tool fatigue can cause you to make ugly maps. It’s not that your design skills are bad, it’s that your tool skills are bad.
Today, as I was exploring new tools to create maps (exhibit A, TileMill project in progress)*, it dawned on me that a lot of the problem with bad map design is simple. If you don’t know a tool well enough you spend 90% of the allotted time learning the tool, leaving very little left over for modifying and fine-tuning the design, leading to ineffective design.
In this blog, I usually try to focus on cartographic technique and leave it up to the reader to figure out how to wrangle their tool(s) of choice into making well-designed maps. However, when you spend an hour or so just trying to do basic coloring and labeling at different zoom levels, you’ve got little energy left over for decent design, let alone beauty. However, this leads into my oft-repeated advice to never give up on a map once it is “good enough”. You must persevere even if you are trying out a new tool and it is taking everything you’ve got just to figure out the halo syntax or where the line generalizing functions are. Also, be sure to factor that learning time into your deliverable schedule!
Exhibit A: a new TileMill map, in progress: Colors need to be fixed. Large region names are not dark enough. Small label conflicts. Transparency must be increased.
*Yes, I’ve used TileMill before but need to get to the good stuff!
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