04: Cartography
Yesterday in the Great Smokies
Webcam
archive
Announcements
- Remaining schedule.
- Missed task 2?
- Geography Week activities. 🔗
- Does your house have lead water lines 🔗
Make a map
of your life changing moments.
Make a map
of your interests.
Final project
What do you love? hate?
Urban observation towers
Important places for me.
Map?
I've never seen one, let's make one!
How to start?
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Use my mobile device and GPS their locations.
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Add that to QGIS, maybe add more attributes.
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Tell a story about these places.
24 UOTs
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That was a bit of work to GPS map.
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Maybe this has already been done?
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Big picture: a map of just locations is not very interesting.
QuickOSM
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A QGIS plugin that allows you to download OpenStreetMap data directly into QGIS.
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OpenStreetMap key/value pairs
are used to filter data.
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In-class demonstration. 🤞
Powers earned 🐉
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Create and manipulate data
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with basic understanding of workflows.
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Solid foundation on which to create unique maps.
Cartography
art & science of map making
Maps as art?
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Highly collectable, rare historic maps. Just pick one from the David Rumsey Collection 🔗
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Modern map makers selling wall art at Muir Way 🔗
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Artists making maps: Hell's Hundred Acres, 1960-2000 🔗
Effective map?
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Cartographic design,
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use of map elements,
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and deliberate layout.
Cartographic design
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is data realized on page.
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Subset of graphic design.
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but marks represent real-world features and phenomena.
Puzzles 🧩
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Making a map is a puzzle
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using visual variables on the page.
Visual variables
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Visual characteristics of a map layer that can be used to represent different features, themes, or data
categories.
Color, size, shape
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How might you change and combine these to communicate different information?
Bizarre Love Triangle
©1987 New Order
Previous two maps
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Charles Joseph Minard
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Pioneered the flow line – Wine exports, 1854. (Compare to this map in 1944)
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Figurative Map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian campaign 1812–1813.
Color scheme
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A collection (palette, ramp, scale, etc.) of colors used in a design.
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Advice:
It's hard to pick a color!
Hex colors
- Condensed color notation
- developed for web
pages
- and excellent way to copy colors.
- Examples
- #000000 = black
- #ffffff = white
- #ff0000 = red
- #ff00ff = magenta
Rules 🔨
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Do not overuse color.
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Follow conventions (at least initially).
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Use an appropriate color scheme for the feature presented.
Color schemes
- By type: use categorical (qualitative) color scheme, e.g., land
use
type.
- By magnitude: use sequential (quantitative) color scheme, e.g.,
county
population.
- Reference
Symbol sets
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Combining visual variables to show real-world features and phenomena.
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Maps are mostly symbols.
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Reference
Where do you define map symbols?
In a map legend.
What completes a map?
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Asides, marginalia, surrounds, or elements
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that helps people interpret the map.
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Without them, the map is a graphic.
Required elements
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Title (& subtitle)
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Legend (or key)
- Decipher the visual variables.
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Source attribution & date
Elements on reference maps
Other elements?
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Yes, like photos, illustrations, and text
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that enhance your map's story.
What completes a page?
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Balanced layout of all elements on page.
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Compartmentalized system
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vs. a fluid system.
Visual hierarchy
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The order in which the 👁️ perceives what it sees
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should match the intellectual hierarchy.
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Try: title > map >
legend
Requirements
- Documentation
- Design a thematic or reference map
- and we'll do it live in class!
Reference Map
- Map used for navigation
- and referencing features.
- Example: USGS Topographic maps 🔗
- Example: Trail map 🔗
Thematic Map
- Map used for showing a particular theme
- like the distribution of population.
- Choropleth map
- colors polygon to show quantity of distribution.
- Example: Population density 🔗
Getting ideas for a final project?
04: Cartography Yesterday in the Great Smokies Webcam archive GEO 109: Digital Mapping