“There’s just something hypnotic about maps.” If you missed it on NPR last night, check out Fresh Air’s Dave Davies interview with trivia buff Ken Jennings about his recently published book “Maphead.” Listen to the full interview – it’s a gem for all of us. I’ve already got folks asking if I’ve read it yet – it is a must on my reading list ! Maphead, a charming, funny, and of course, informational book about the world of maps and the people who love them.

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks
by Ken Jennings

Key buildings are represented with red icons, while rivers and public spaces are shown in vivid blue and green. The plates’ designs portray a bold, graphic representation of distinctly fascinating cities.

 

 

Montreal City Plate

$50.00

Berlin City Plate

$50.0

Brasilia City Plate

$50.00

Cairo City Plate

$50.00

Chicago City Plate

$50.00

Dubai City Plate

$50.00

Las Vegas City Plate

$50.00

London City Plate

$50.00

Los Angeles City Plate

$50.00

Melbourne City Plate

$50.00

Mexico City Plate

$50.00

Mumbai City Plate

$50.00

New Orleans City Plate

$50.00

New York City Plate

$50.00

This isn’t a lesson in cartography, rather a review of the important purposes that maps can serve in modern web design. Three main areas seem to represent the majority of tasks:

1. Navigation and directions,
2. Show relationships and trends geographically,
3. Show points of interest.

Geared primarily toward a web-designer audience, this article is good review for GIS specialists and cartographers preparing maps for online content. Zach describes the different ways to navigate online maps (drill down for information, timeline, zoom, before-and-after, and points of interest), looks at future trends, and provides a nice showcase of maps for inspiration.

via Maps In Modern Web Design: Showcase and Examples – Smashing Magazine.

Through the advancements of modern digital elevation technologies, we are quickly loosing previous generations’ hand-drafted relief maps to new techniques, closing cartography companies, and the trash-bins outside their doors. A few individuals are seeking to preserve these beautiful resources by creating a public digital archive of shaded relief maps for integration with modern cartographic products.

Tom Patterson, US National Park Service, and Bernhard Jenny, Institute of Cartography, ETH Zurich, introduced an archive of stunning artistically rendered shaded relief images at the 2010 NACIS Practical Cartography Day.

While digital elevation models and hill shading techniques are common in todays world of digital cartography, these data sets often fall short of communicating the natural relief patterns particularly for small-scale mapping. As is illustrated below, digital relief tends to offer too much detail (image 2). The manually rendered terrain (image 1) provides a sense of the terrain when looking at a large region or world view. Both images are registered to 1:50 million Natural Earth vector drainages.

1. Manual shaded relief by Herwig G. Schutzler of Latin America.

2. Digital shaded relief from downsampled SRTM data.

The images are georeferenced so you can use them with your small-scale mapping projects. Some shaded relief images are georeferenced and adjusted to fit the drainage network of the Natural Earth vector data. Data is stored in the GeoTIFF file format, a world file and reference coast lines in shape format are provided for each georeferenced image.

To add a quality of fine craftsmanship to your next project, check out this amazing resource today. If you know of a source that should be included, contributions are welcomed (please contact the authors).

Daniel Huffman of somethingaboutmaps has posted his stylish series of river maps, done in the style of Harry Beck‘s famous London Underground design. His post on the topic is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in cartography. In addition to a preview of his river system maps, Daniel does an excellent job navigating us through his design process. Daniel has produced four of these maps so far, all of which are available for sale on Zazzle.

Side note: Over at Mapdiva we’re putting final touches on the next update of Ortelius. One enhancement to anticipate is direct label rotation – making this style of map easier to produce. Stay tuned!

480 – The Fool’s Cap Map of the World | Strange Maps | Big Think.

“I digitally manipulate cartographic materials to create fauna, mostly birds, in poses reminiscent of field guides from a similarly early era of publication,” the Richmond, VA native’s site explains. “The patterns of forests and shores often become an animal’s feathers or fur, while the rings of topography often trace out wings or antlers.” read more…The Atlas is Painless on Cool Hunting.

GOOD/Transparency provides a graphical exploration of the data that surrounds us. This infographic  depicts a “map” charting walking, biking, driving, and use of public transportation correlated with state obesity rate data (data sources: Trust for America’s Health; U.S. Census. Via Streetsblog).

It’s a simple equation: Exercise more and lose weight. Still, many people spend most of their time either behind a desk or driving to or from where that desk is located. A few states buck that trend with large cities that allow for more walking, biking, and commuting via public transportation, but are their citizens any more fit? This is a look at how people get to work in various states, alongside those states’ obesity rates.

SOURCE Transparency: Does Commuting By Car Make You Fat? – Transparency – GOOD.

A collaboration between GOOD and Hyperakt.