Hand Drawn Map Association: Oodles of Love for the Hand Drawn Map
An all-time favorite site of mine is the Hand Drawn Map Association. As I dole out love for the hand drawn map, I’d be remiss not to feature this fav.
The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an ongoing archive of user submitted maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand. The HDMA website features a clean and easy to explore gallery and collections of maps. In addition, “Connect” provides notable happenings such as the September HDMA lecture and book signing at the New York Public Library.
The HDMA is also about to release From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association a new book available for pre-order (only $11.80 USD) from Amazon. The book features an exclusive collection of maps and will be available this September.
For map lovers young and old, this site is just plain fun.
Vote Now in The Bizarre Map Challenge
Vote by April 26th, 2010!
Public voting is open for The Bizarre Map Challenge and every vote counts! The Bizarre Map Challenge is a map design competition open to high school, college, and university students in the United States. The goals of this challenge are: to promote spatial thinking; increase awareness of geospatial technology; and inspire curiosity about geographic patterns and map representation in students and the broader public.
The Prizes (wow!)
- First Prize: $5,000
- Second Prize: $1,000
- Third Prize: $600
- and $200 each to the remaining top 10
Your participation through voting helps encourage young map-makers and demonstrates public support for this exciting, fun, and educational competition. Who knows, maybe next year someone you know will compete! Vote for your favorite map now and help spread the word. Voting ends 12:00pm Pacific Time, April 26, 2010.
The Bizarre Map Challenge competition is supported by the National GeoTech Center and San Diego State University.
Atlas of Explorations for the Pacific Railroad: Giving Some Love for the Hand-Drawn Map
Who doesn’t love the artistry of a hand-drawn map? I’ve been looking at some fine examples lately and wanted to share a few of my personal favorites.
I’m starting with Elbie Bentley’s “Atlas of Explorations for the Pacific Railroad” because it represents a mastery of hand-drawn cartographic technique – particularly hachuring – seldom seen today. I’m also a big fan of multi-media when it comes to mapping, and Elbie seems to effortlessly merge her hand-drawn maps and digital cartography with much artistry and clarity. Akin to the fine tradition in architectural drawing, combining hand-drawn techniques with digital should (in my opinion) be more common practice in modern cartography. I was first introduced to Elbie’s work this fall at NACIS. Elbie was kind enough afterward to share more of her work with me. This talented young cartographer has produced an integrated narrative piece of expedition through a beautilfully illustrated, self-published, “Atlas of Explorations for the Pacific Railroad” (see a preview of the Atlas on sale at Blurb). Okay, I’ve been officially sucked-in by the multi-media maps and narrative approach of the Atlas. I find it refreshing and inspiring, not only by the well designed content and articulation of the narrative, but also the craftsmanship and technique employed.
Hachuring process
Here is a summary from the Blurb website: “The Gunnison-Beckwith expedition for the Pacific Railroad (1853-1854) produced a particularly intriguing report containing adventure, illustration, and topographic presentation. The intensity of the stories and the beauty of the artistic products contained within the reports remain, however, largely unknown. This atlas represents this significant historical event in an a set of maps organized to be read like a novel. The cartographic language of the nineteenth century topographic explorers is also mimicked in each map to recreate their world of incorporated illustrations, observation, and text.” Elbie is a recent graduate of Ohio University – Department of Geography.
Cartography Celebrated – The Year in Maps
We started off 2008 with a fantastic map exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum “Maps – Finding Our Place in the World.” Ending the year, the Boston Globe has offered an interesting article on what is described as a “cartography boom” http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/12/28/the_year_in_maps/ .
Role of Sketching in Map Design Layouts
Hand-drawn sketching plays an important role in the digital arts. The larger a project is, and the more concepts a client will need to see, the more sketching will prove its worth in your design process. Consider using rough sketches for composition or layout options in your next project. Or push yourself to do a handful of thumbnail sketches before firing up your cartography software of choice. Create ten well thought out map design options (not seven to make three look good). Select three and refine each. Select one for final design.
In Role of Sketching in the Design Process, Sean Hodge discusses sketching for rapid concept development in traditional design. This same process should be considered in cartography.
Cartographer as Designer – IT’S A PROCESS!
Example Map by XNR Productions
Those who design maps for use by others engage in a specialized form of communication. They create images to represent physical and phenomena in three-dimensional space, but they create them on two-dimensional surfaces. To do this effectively, a cartographer must understand not only the phenomena on which the maps are based, but also how to work with them to communicate information to others. No amount of skill with computer software can rescue a map that displays a lack of understanding of the cartographic design process. Read more
ScapeToad Cartogram Software
ScapeToad is an interesting, free, stand-alone cartogram software for Mac, Windows (and available platform independent). ScapeToad 1.1 is available for download under a GPL license.
Classical thematic mapping displays spatial patterns of theme or series data depicted on familiar reference maps of standard land-area polygons, which are typically distorted only by the selected projection. A cartogram is a map in which some thematic mapping variable – such as travel time or Gross National Product – is substituted for land area. The geometry or space of the map is distorted in order to convey the information of this alternate variable. There are two main types of cartograms: area and distance cartograms. To see examples, WorldMapper.org provides a nice collection of cartograms.
(from the ScapeToad website) “The visualization of social phenomena through classical thematic mapping often leads to unsatisfying representations… Cartograms are a well-known technique used to compensate for this inconvenience by breaking the link between statistical regions and their topographical areas. Consequently, this liberates one visual variable (that of polygon size) for a more relevant use, such as the representation of the relative social importance of these regions (usually measured by the size of their populations), while leaving intact their topological relations.”
Thematic Mapping Engine
Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth. The primary data source is UNdata.
The engine returns a KMZ file that you can open in Google Earth or download to your computer.
UCL’s Map Tube
MapTube Big Mac Index
MapTube is a free resource for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online. Created by UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, users can select any number of maps to overlay and view.
Lakeshore Nature Preserve (WI)
Beautiful example of interactivity – clean map interface and intuitive design.
This map was created at the UW-Madison Cartography Lab by Rob Roth, Andy Woodruff, Joel Przybylowski under the supervision of Professor Bill Cronon and Professor Mark Harrower. Melanie McCalmont assisted with info window text and image production. Production: May-November 2006
