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Swiss Topo Style, and risk in cartography


I haven’t written a post in a while so it seemed the best way to kick my butt into doing one was to lighten up and do a free-form post. Sometimes the biggest barrier to writing is the idea that it has to be perfect. The onerous task of revising and getting all the links and pictures just right takes so much time that it can seem daunting. So to heck with all that.

Earlier this week I posted something on twitter which, as usual with my twitter postings, probably made very little sense to those who read it. It went something like, “Everyone likes maps with hillshading, contour lines, and hachures. All on the same map.” And what I really meant was

I just read a tweet where someone said that these swiss topo style online maps that made the rounds recently should be formalized as best practice styling for online maps. In other words, a lot of people really like those maps. And I do too. But it made me wonder why everyone likes them. As someone who makes maps and who might aspire to actually making a popular map someday, it’d be good to note what everyone likes, correct?

Kind of like Cindy Brewer noting in her book that studies show that everyone likes blue and not a lot of people like yellow. We cartographers should pay attention to those things if we want our maps to be received in a credible light. The pure artists in the crowd will scoff at this of course. That guy making the huge (Michael Heizer) desert art installation says that art is only worth it when you’re taking a risk. Or maybe that art is only art when it’s risky.

I don’t know how to reconcile those two thoughts. As a cartographer do we want to be risky or do we want to use styles that we already know people will resonate with? Do you have to always go risky or always be conformal (little projection joke there)?

Someone read the tweet and is going to see if she can find a student to do a study on the swiss topo style to see if people do indeed like it better than other styles and if so, why. There’s some speculation that people might like the swiss topo style because the contour lines make them feel smart.

STFTW?

(Swiss Topo For The Win?) What do you think?

 So there we have it: a blog post written without a single edit session. Read at your own peril. Okay okay except the one revision where I added an actual title to the post.

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This entry was posted on September 1, 2016, 7:22 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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