Mike Bostock has generated a single image showing every map projection class available in the d3-geo and d3-geo-projection JavaScript libraries. Not every map projection in existence is included, mind. [Benjamin Hennig]
Category: Cartography
Mapchart
Mapchart is a quick and dirty way to make choropleth and other coloured outline maps for online use: choose a map (world, continents, some countries), assign a colour to the state, province or country, build a legend, export to image. [Boing Boing]
Hennig and Dorling on ‘Seven New Maps of the World’
“Seven New Maps of the World,” a presentation by Benjamin Hennig (Views of the World) and Danny Dorling (People and Places), both renowned cartogrammers, will take place on the opening weekend of the Oxfordshire Science Festival Sunday, 26 June 2016 at 1 PM, at the Story Museum, Pembroke Street, Oxford. Tickets £5. [Benjamin Hennig]
Update, 20 June: And here are the seven maps in question.
Oceania: The Truncated Continent
In “Cartographic ethics: Oceania, the truncated continent,” Dietmar Offenhuber complains about world maps of climate change that obscure the region of the world most affected by it: Oceania. It’s an important point both in specific and in general, as he goes on to say:
Oceania is mostly an invisible continent: its islands, islets, and atolls being too small to be printed on most world maps. On the outer fringes of most world maps, its territories are cropped or covered by a legend. With of our example, the world ends just after New Zealand, and the legend covers eastern parts of French Polynesia.
The thoughtless use of Mercator projections in world maps is generally frowned upon, but truncating the lobes of projections such as Mollweide and Robinson is just as bad. But even without such mistakes, all political maps struggle with a conflict of intent: on the one hand, accurate representation of territory, on the other hand, the appropriate representation of populations.
To get a better picture of Oceania, I made a simple map of all named islands and atolls, described in the remainder of this post.
(See map above.) [Boing Boing]
The Chicago Tribune Reviews Two Map Books
Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Patrick Reardon reviews two map books I’ve mentioned before, albeit briefly: Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary, edited by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim, which comes out in a few days; and Mind the Map: Illustrated Maps and Cartography, edited by Antonis Antoniou, Robert Klanten and Sven Ehmann, which came out last September. “Each of these books aims to show a wide spectrum of map-making,” writes Reardon, “and together they cover just about the entire waterfront.” [WMS]
Previously: Cartographic Grounds; Mind the Map.
Don’t Make a Map
Martin Burch, data developer for the Wall Street Journal, has posted his presentation from the GeoJourNews 2016 conference. Called “Don’t Make a Map,” it explores situations where presenting your data in the form of a map is actually a bad idea, and looks at some better alternatives. “Always make a map,” he concludes, “but don’t always publish it.” Very much in the vein of similar pieces by Darla Cameron (of the Washington Post) and Matthew Ericson (of the New York Times). [Carla Astudillo]
Previously: The End of Maps in Seven Charts.
Cartographic Grounds
Next week sees the publication of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural Press). From the publisher: “While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the depiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself.” Cartographic Grounds’ ten chapters each focus on one cartographic technique; each of these techniques is illustrated in Atlas Obscura’s post last month about the book. [Benjamin Hennig]
Comparing Google and Apple Map Styles
Justin O’Beirne, who has previously mused about the possibility of a Universal Map and looked at how Google Maps has changed over the past few years, has now embarked on a multi-part comparison of the cartographic designs of Google Maps and Apple Maps. “We’ll take a look at what’s on each map and how each map is styled, and we’ll also try to uncover the biggest differences between the two.” The first part is already up: it looks at city labels, highway markers, road labels, and points of interest, and reveals some interesting divergences in terms what each platform chooses to put on the map. (Note that it’s a very big page, and even on a fast connection the images may take some time to load.) [Cartophilia]
Eduard Imhof Profile
A profile of Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof, famous for his work on relief mapping, from a 1983 Swiss TV program. Captioned in English if you can’t understand Swiss German for some reason. (Thanks to Henrik Johansson for the link.)
More on Imhof at Relief Shading, Terrain Models and Wikipedia.
Previously: Imhof’s Cartographic Relief Presentation; Codex 99 on Berann, Imhof and Everest.
CBS News on the Persistence of Traditional Map-Making
Here’s a CBS News story on the persistence of paper maps in the digital age. Featuring quotes from University of Wisconsin cartographer Daniel Huffman and Library of Congress map librarian John Hessler, it’s more about the persistence of non-smartphone (read: non-Google) maps rather than paper. [WMS]
Map Contest: Proposed Mars Landing Sites
The ICA’s Commission on Planetary Cartography has put out a call for maps of the 47 proposed exploration zones on Mars.
The project is to select one candidate landing site and design an actual map that you envision will be useful in surface operations. We ask that you do not create simply a geologic map, but rather a product that can be used by the astronauts during their approximately one-year long mission within the Exploration Zone. This requires creativity, and it is also useful to have a good knowledge of surface features, surface hazards, science goals and the use of the proper cartographic tools.
The contest is open to students, young professional cartographers, and graphic artists in any country of the world.
More at the ICA and All Over the Map. [Leventhal/WMS]
The Universal Map
If the attempts by India, China and other countries to control how they’re mapped seem like a throwback to an earlier age, it’s probably because they are: last September Justin O’Beirne looked at the recent, rapid changes in cartography and came to the realization that, thanks to the ubiquity and accessibility of modern mobile maps (especially Google’s), “for the first time in human history, the majority of the world might soon be using the same map.” Bespoke maps that speak to your particular world view are, in the face of global corporations on the one hand and global crowdsourcing on the other, quaint. A cry for special, partial treatment; frustration at having lost control. [Afflictor]
A Gallery of Student Maps
Here’s a gallery of student maps from the Fall 2015 semester of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Introduction to Cartography course, courtesy of student magazine Edge Effects. Some nice and interesting work. [Andy Woodruff]
‘What Happened to Google Maps?’
In an essay called “What Happened to Google Maps?” Justin O’Beirne notes that between 2010 and 2016 Google Maps has changed from emphasizing cities at the expense of roads to emphasizing the road network at the expense of cities—a turn he chalks up to the shift to mobile device usage—and turns to a 1960s-era paper map to demonstrate what he thinks a balanced Google Maps should look like. An interesting look at the design choices in online maps. [Cartophilia]
Maps and Civilization, Fourth Edition
While poking around the University of Chicago Press website yesterday, I noticed that a fourth edition of Norman J. W. Thrower’s history of cartography textbook, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, is due out this month: Amazon. The changes from the third edition (Amazon, iBooks) appear to be limited: “For the fourth edition of Maps and Civilization, Thrower has added an additional chapter that serves to bring the volume completely up to date.” My gaps in cartographic knowledge are such that I’ve never read this book; this may be an opportunity to rectify that.