As referenced in the previous post, from time to time I give workshops and webinars. During them, I like to point out how many bad maps there are out there. Interested in seeing a few? I thought so. It makes us all feel better about our own–let’s face it–blunders that we make occasionally.

You are here and here and here…
Hat tip: Bjorn Sandvik and Hugo Ahlenius

Contain yourself. There aren’t enough boxes around things in this world.

Spell check people.

The Pacific Islands. Or not.
Hat tip: Andy Woodruff and Hugo Ahlenius

In art, we see time and again that contemporary audiences won’t necessarily appreciate, and in fact sometimes outright hate, the works of artists who are at the forefront of nouveau movements. In Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi (which admittedly has an absolutely ridiculous cover image), states

“Breaks from tradition, resulting in work that seems (and is) rebellious but which, in time, becomes the tradition, are not the exception but the rule.”

Avant-garde and just plain excellent!

We saw the Colorado Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker this weekend. The set was beautiful, the same as last year but no less lustrous, and the dancing perfect. They gave the audience visual complexity and elegance while also minding the technical details. Has your latest cartography project aimed for the same dual achievements?

This is a new feature for the blog: map critiques. To start us off, I gathered three random salmon-related maps to display and make a few comments on. Any critiques you’d like to contribute in the comments are welcome.

This map gets good marks for color scheme, especially given that it’s vintage 2004, a time when these kinds of bold colors were just coming into map fashion. The choice of coordinate system leaves a bit to be desired with regard to the enormity of the Hudson Bay. The reasoning behind outlining Washington State and Main in white is not clear. The rivers, though obviously placed here due to stream-system applicability with the species in question, don’t, in the end, do anything but detract from the main message.












A lot of salmon maps have hypsometric tinting and hillshade backgrounds. I’m agnostic about that. What I really like about this map is that the red dots look like salmon roe. Was that purposeful? The labels for CANADA and U.S.A. creeping up the side are a bit odd.









Once you realize the pie chart sizes are related to proportional release size, the map makes a lot of sense. Overall, a decent map. One wonders if it could have had a simple background instead of the hillshade, and if there were a better way than pie charts to represent the data.




















Unrelated News: There’s a new version of Natural Earth data, version 2.0.0. There are a lot of good things going on with this update including new “gray earth rasters” (terrain), readme and version files, and new economic geography data. Opportunity for change: the list of contributors is all male.Correction via @kelsosCorner (Nathaniel Kelso) “Tanya, Melissa, Jill, Annemarie, and Kimi all helped with the earlier releases. 2.0 was mostly me with a few assists.”