Archive for October, 2010
Design by Association
Posted by Gretchen in Terminology on October 11, 2010
There is a cartographic maxim that the features you put on your map should, if at all possible, be represented in a stylistically real way. What this means is that water features are often blue, meadows might be denoted in green, a camp site symbol looks like a little tent, a railroad is symbolized with what looks like a miniature railroad, and so forth and so on.
The term for a word that itself is very much like the thing it is describing (hiss, boo, buzz) is onomatopoeia. Don’t you think we should have a cool sounding word like that for map features that look like the real thing? Onomapopoeia maybe?
How Much Critique Is Normal?
Posted by Gretchen in Cartography Profession on October 8, 2010
I gave a talk at Colorado State University yesterday titled “Maps That Show Off: Communicating Our Work Through Cartography.” Part of my talk focused on the importance of incorporating critique into your map design process.
During the question/answer session Amy asked me how typical it is to get critique from my clients. I told her that it is fairly common – especially to get critiqued on things like color, which everyone seems to have an opinion on. I’d like to elaborate on this just a little bit.
First off, every client is different. I’ve had some clients who give me free reign and rarely have comments over things like color or other design aspects – though they might want an underlying data layer changed, they won’t get involved with the design. These people may figure that they’ve hired a professional to do this, so why spend their valuable time changing things?
Other people like to have more involvement. For those people it might be nice to offer several solutions at the end to choose from. Usually, though, my solution is to involve these people with design decisions from the beginning. For example, if I am having some trouble putting all the elements onto one map while maintaining readability, I might mention that this is something I’m working on. This allows them to be a part of the overall process, see where the end product came from, etc.
I am fortunate to have some very long term clients. With long-terms clients there might be a project where they want more involvement in the look/feel of a map while on other projects they simply delegate the whole thing to me. It really depends on their outcome expectations and time availability.
In general, I very much encourage feedback from anyone I’ve designed a map for (and from clients for whom I’m doing analysis – which is, after all, the main focus of my firm).
Activate Your Inner Innovator
Posted by Gretchen in Creativity on October 6, 2010
Did you know that creativity is something that everybody possesses and that all you need to do is activate it? When you need a burst of creative energy the easiest method to employ is a creative exercise that is designed to free your brain from verbal processing and into visual processing, which then allows for novel and innovative ideas to flow. There are a lot of exercises you can do, many of which take mere seconds from start to finish.
One of these is something that will take you somewhere between 10 seconds and 20 seconds to accomplish. Please don’t tell me you can’t spare that amount of time. 
This is from the book referenced in yesterday’s post.
First, draw free-form squiggles on a piece of paper. They might look like this:
Now add in a circle ( o ) and an open triangle ( < ) on it somewhere:
And there you go: a free-form bird. Next time you go into one of those meetings where you are supposed to come up with solutions (yes, I hear meetings sometimes have these kinds of goals, though usually the goal is to show off how much you know to your colleagues) doodle these on a piece of paper while you think. Your creative brain will awaken and the ideas will begin formulating.
What’s even better is that the ideas you do have will likely come in the form of visual ideas instead of verbal ideas. If you can get the rest of your group to visualize a potential idea too, then the group will evaluate it much more effectively (realistically) than it would with just words.
A Case Against Innovation
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices, Design on October 5, 2010
The contrarian that I am, I figured I’d try to formulate a good counter-argument against my oft-repeated admonitions to be creative, innovative, and novel. So this is it: I’m going to consider an argument against innovation that explains why certain cartographic conventions really are the best under certain circumstances. And I’m going to keep it short.
A great argument for this idea is in a book called Visual Thinking: for Design
The theory of objects as patterns of patterns means that some objects will be easier to identify than others. . .if we want objects to be rapidly and reliably identified, they should be typical members of their class and shown from a typical viewpoint.
Some example implications for map design are as follows:
- Maybe choosing the color blue for roads won’t be good. The viewer may confuse them for rivers, albeit fairly straight ones.
- If you choose a projection that the audience is not used to, they may take a few extra seconds to think about the fact that the shape is different, and in those seconds you may lose credibility.
- Using a font that nobody is used to seeing for all your labels (Bauhaus 93 is pretty cool but maybe not for street labels?) reduces letter recognition time and thereby reduces legibility.
- As Peter Batty explains, when possible use the standard Google toolbar in your web maps since that is what the majority of users are already accustomed to and adept at.
In more general terms, use standard symbols to ensure map readability and standard content to ensure correct and rapid interpretation.
Why Good Map Design?
Why spend a great amount of time creating a map? Why not just slap your data onto a layout, pick some colors at random, and use default legends, for example? One of the most succinct and best ways of explaining why we should spend the – admittedly large – amount of time that it takes to make a good map comes from the Dec/Jan 2009 issue of DYNAMIC GRAPHICS + create* magazine:
Design motivates consumers and educates the uninformed
If you start to internalize the importance of good design then you might not wind up making something as unreadable as this:
And perhaps you could create something more like this:
Background information: The Ohio telephone services area map is an actual map available from an actual agency, or at least it was in 2008 when it was published. The re-worked Ohio map is my own creation that I made for illustrative purposes after downloading the data from the same agency’s site. The main difference between the two maps is that mine actually has a visual hierarchy. That is, the first thing you see are the area code colors and the legend that goes with them. The second thing you see are the outlines for the telephone service areas, the third are the labels which denote which agency services which area – you can’t see the labels here because I’ve kept the image small so you’ll have to trust me on that one. The first map attempted to show each of the 36 – 36!!! – service areas with a different color. Obviously that didn’t work and they resorted to hashing and patterning to further distinguish them. Why not just label with a code as I have done and provide a look-up table? Well, it takes time to come up with those kinds of solutions!
Caveat: We all make bad maps. Especially at the beginning of a career. If you see a good map don’t think it was always good. It’s very likely that it was a mess in the beginning. Just like the first-draft of a paper, it usually needs a lot of work before it is great.
*The link to the magazine is here but their print magazine is much better looking than their website.
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