You learn something new every day. Like the idea that orange and purple might look good together on a map. Here’s the map I saw this color scheme on, hanging from the rafters at a local grocery store:

And those colors actually do work together, especially in the context of a grocery store where there isn’t a lot of purple about the place. Unfortunately, the picture didn’t turn out too well, but you get the idea. It’s mostly white, dark purple, medium orange, and a tiny splash of green in Africa. So there’s some color inspiration for your day!

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

A Japanese Garden is the closest to mapping design of all the genres because in its essence, the Japanese Garden is a miniature world, just like a map. This means careful attention must be paid to directing the user’s attention to certain elements, scale, and architectural integration. These concepts are discussed below.

1) DIRECTING FLOW The path as garden feature is an important part of this garden type. A path can lead you to vistas and helps keep the rest of the garden from being trod on. So to is the element of emphasis in map design. Emphasis can be achieved in many ways in map design from making the main-point a bold color, to a larger size, to setting it off from the rest through masking. The map shown here is an example of masking out the background information (context) so that while it hasn’t quite disappeared, it is obviously not the location that the map reader focuses on. Photograph taken by Clifton Olds, Bowdoin, map by PetersonGIS

2) SCALE The Japanese Garden is usually built within a small space. in it, the designer wants to give the illusion of a larger space. To create the illusion, the size of objects that are even slightly further away from focal points will be much smaller, so that they seem further away than they really are. In mapping, this scale distortion is needed when a lot of information needs to be depicted for a very small space, while outlying information is also needed. A common technique in subway maps, for example, is to make the scale larger in the dense areas and smaller in the outlying locations so that the whole system can be shown on one map in a clear way. Photograph by Melissa Wilmot, map by Jake Berman

3) ARCHITECTURE / ICONS Japanese Gardens often feature buildings or small tea houses that blend in to the landscape from the perspective of the garden walker and that incorporate the landscape when visualized from within the building. In map design, we can use this principle to ensure that the structured elements that are imposed on the maps (think of icons and labels) blend well while still being visible and maintaining their importance. In the map shown below, the icons have a definite structure but their color and rounded corners serve to integrate them into the trail and hillshade graphics surrounding them. Photograph of Ritsurin Park by wiiii, map by core GIS

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

An English Garden is a bit of a confusing genre because it can refer to gardens that evoke an idyllic rural scene (even a bit wild), but it can also mean a well manicured space. Here I’m focusing on the idyllic, rural type. Some characteristics of these types of English Gardens are also applicable to cartography. They are discussed below.

1) HARMONY The English Garden, especially when it first came into being, consisted mainly of rolling hills and water features that gently fit one within the other. In mapping, this would be considered a calm, non-jarring, type of scheme that allows most, and perhaps all, elements to have similar weights and colors. The perfect example map for this is a children’s book, fictional map illustration, that is hand-drawn, and contains minimal changes in color. The map here is a great example because the color is well blended* with a lot of texture. Photograph taken by thoughtbecontact, map by Peggy Turchette

2) LUSH English landscapes are known for their lush quality due to the large amount of rains they get. They can grow amazingly colorful flowers and have very green fields. A map with a lush character has a lot of bold color as well. The example shows a geologic map of the moon. Photograph by ukgardenphotos, map by USGS

3) CHARM An English Garden can be a great example of charming design. Data analysts, such as myself, don’t often involve any elements of charm in our map products, but it is nice to know that there are cartographers out there who have a map audience that can appreciate charm. The map shown here isn’t the best cartographic product in existence but it is a good example of making the look of your map match the audience. The map was made specifically to illustrate the locations of lots in a new development that describes itself as being in a “charming, private, country setting.” Photograph by vigor, map source here

*For one technique on digitally creating a watercolor effect, see this post. Also, remember that Illustrator has a watercolor effect tool that you can apply to a whole map or just part of a map.

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

1. Make it a habit to browse existing maps on a weekly basis. Jot down any and all ideas that come to you as a result of seeing what others are up to in the field. To start browsing, check out the Esri Map Book Gallery, the CartoTalk Map Gallery (you have to sign up to see the maps, but it’s worth it), and see what others are linking to on twitter for the most currently buzzed-about maps (if you haven’t seen this map on Slate this week, you haven’t been keeping up with twitter!).
2. Figure out what the top three things are that your clients, boss, customers (whomever you design for) want. Be brutally honest. Do they want the cheapest product and are willing to sacrifice excellent design or even basic design (i.e., legibility)? Are you not putting in enough time to get the quality they need? Whatever they are, write those things down in a place that you’ll see them all year. Either start producing in the way that is needed or find different clientele, or a different job.
3. Don’t let 2012 pass by without entering in a map design contest. There’s nothing like some competitive adrenaline to give yourself a kick-in-the-pants to get you to that next level.
4. Think of something you can do to contribute to the profession and do it. Whether it’s a paper in a refereed journal, a blog post for an online geo magazine, a presentation at GIS Day, or time spent on VGI, make it a priority to not just give back but to advance the field.
5. Think of one doable thing that will make your work-life better and do it. Maybe you need to give a standing desk a try, add a new photo to your cube wall, buy the 100″ wide Giclée printer (no such thing but it would be cool), or get another hard drive. Whatever makes you happy, get that done.

I don’t know what it is with Mark Twain, but this’ll be my third post mentioning him. The previous posts are Critiques: Consider the Source and Fortifications of Paris. This time I wanted to highlight a “map” that he has published in his autobiography. It’s actually more of a diagram, and indeed, he has titled it as “Diagram of London” but being that it still has a spatial (though not to-scale) component, it still has a bit of relevance to the blog.

Mark Twain’s autobiography can be found (in full, I believe) on Google Docs. Here’s the diagram I am referring to:

And here is what he says about it:

One little wee bunch of houses in London, one little wee spot, is the centre of the globe, the heart of the globe, and the machinery that moves the world is located there. It is called the City, and it, with a patch of its borderland, is a city. But the rest of London is not a city. It is fifty villages massed solidly together over a vast stretch of territory. Each village has its own name and its own government.