About Cartography
Analogue Beginnings
My fascination with maps began in childhood, sparked by the renowned National Geographic magazine. I was captivated by its maps, unaware that cartography would become a cornerstone of my career, along with the colour yellow!
My cartographic training in the mid-to-late 80s was analogue-based, using technical pens, rub-down transfers, tapes, scribing, film separations, etc. Production was time-consuming, requiring a strong grasp of cartographic theory and well-developed practical techniques. Today’s advanced software offers much assistance and hides complexity.
There was a stronger connection between mind and hand then, still considered a vital skill in visual thinking today. You had to visualise the final map in your head, as screen-based experimentation was unavailable. You also needed to understand how the map was constructed from film colour separations. In many ways, the complexity was clear then.
Digital Scepticism
I believe that a strong foundation in analogue techniques was crucial for successfully adopting and applying emerging digital tools and techniques. An analogue education enhances understanding of techniques and effects, and concepts such as generalisation and simplification.
We now have access to incredibly powerful tools that have democratised practice across all fields, including cartography. AI will further enhance this, enabling even novices to create and produce whatever they want. This has the advantage of introducing new ideas, but it also exposes us to an equivalent amount of junk, such as maps with presentation and communicative issues or outright falsehoods and misinformation. As with all technology, there are both advantages and disadvantages, and we must be aware of and navigate these.
The computer science principle of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ (GIGO) is very relevant. A lack of understanding of map design, statistical analysis, communication design, map projections, etc., can only lead to poor and misdirected maps. In our data-rich world, maps and communication tools should be simpler and easier to understand. Instead, we continue to design and develop complex design approaches and artistic endeavours that are incomprehensible to most, but industry peers celebrate these so-called innovative steps because they look nice.
“In a world where more maps are being made than ever before, cartography doesn’t need reinvention; it needs understanding!”
Digital tools are very helpful, but without the necessary theoretical knowledge, we risk making mistakes. We must acknowledge when we lack knowledge and seek help.
False Narratives
Maps are snapshots of the past, present, and future, but the current focus on ‘narratives’ and personal stories has influenced cartography. I don’t mean to be dispassionate, but we often discuss maps in terms of narratives inappropriately. It seems that everything we create these days needs a narrative to be relevant or understood. Unless something is short, highly animated, and turned into a ‘Janet and John’ style narrative, we can’t pay it attention or learn anything.
A map alone lacks a narrative; it’s a picture, an interpretation, a representation at a specific moment. We can’t infer a story without time. We attribute a narrative to a map only when it’s part of a broader discussion. I think we often confuse the synchronic and diachronic paradigms and how we reveal them.
Stories unfold over time. Maps can only reveal a narrative when time is a unit of its conception and measurement. Animated maps or a series of sequential maps on the same theme can reveal a useful narrative, but not a single map. The atlas has always had the role of a narrative, a dying art in mapping that should be fully restored.
The Atlas
The atlas, a fundamental tool of cartography, has seen a decline in popularity over the past few decades. While the digital age has reduced some of its practical uses, I believe it remains more relevant than ever. In an era dominated by narratives, the atlas serves as the ultimate storybook.
The atlas effectively showcased both the intricate details and the overarching themes. Its collection of maps facilitated easy comparisons and contrasts between states or continents, highlighting their relationships. The nature of the atlas often dictated the temporal dimension of the themes.
“Cartography is the language that speaks to all people, transcending borders and uniting us in our shared curiosity.”
I recall a study trip to the Netherlands in the late 80s where local authorities felt like a different world, with proper coffee! They were modern, efficient, and focused on strategic planning and collaboration. Their publications were like atlases, full of maps and diagrams showing a future for regions and life over decades. Sadly, this approach is often missing in the UK, which seems to operate on a crisis reaction basis only, and only then after a long-drawn-out inquiry!
GIS is Not Cartography
GIS professionals work with geospatial data and commonly use maps as a visualisation method. However, filtering and redefining map features and values of existing datasets is not cartography, per se, even though GIS can be a fundamental tool in cartographic practice.
GIS applications only have basic geometric drawing tools, unlike illustration tools like Adobe Illustrator. They mainly perform spatial queries and analysis, often resulting in impressive map-based visualisations. However, they may lack established cartographic principles like generalisation and simplification, often overloading with data density.
Cartography, as a discipline, has been largely replaced by GIS. GIS is a tool that facilitates certain cartographic practices, but cartography isn’t just a set of rules that inform GIS practice. In this age, anything ‘technologically-driven’ seems to be the regarded as the pinnacle.
Elements of Cartography
Recognised as a classic cartographic reference, Elements of Cartography (Robinson, et al., 1953) was one of my core text books whilst at college. There have been around six revisions in total, but even old (pre-digital) editions are worth tracking down as they are still an excellent introduction to cartographic first principles.
The book was one of the first to try and define five key conceptions (foci) in cartography:
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Geometric
: Mapping accuracy of reality; -
Technological
: Mapping efficiency and automation; -
Presentation
: Map design as core activity; -
Communication
: Information transformation and transmission; and -
Artistic
: Psychological and perceptual qualities.
These are still helpful distinctions to understand as part of any objective(s) in map commissions. It also indicative of the nature of cartography; both artistic and scientific. The cartographer is required to understand a broad range of theoretical and informational processes. Somewhat a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’, unless you specialise. As mentioned elsewhere, you need to see the ‘big picture’, but also recognise what you don’t know in the detail.
Map Typologies
Apart from the conceptual foci of maps (above), you can also attempt to identify five core map typologies:
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Topographic
: Represent the natural and made-made world as it is (e.g. OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey maps); -
Topological
: Concerned with spatial relationships rather than geographic accuracy (e.g. London Underground map); -
Thematic
: Reveal (mostly) non-visible phenomena, data or activities (e.g. statistical maps, weather maps, geology maps, etc.); -
Artistic
: These are artistic impressions that have spatial significance (e.g. hand-drawn fantasy maps, painterly oblique aerial views, etc.); and -
Abstract
: This type may not have any significance other than being artistically interesting, and/or presenting a spatial attribute or pattern with non-standard techniques.
As with the previous section, the aim here is to reveal the range of maps and mapping, and how broad it is in both subject and practice.
Counter Cartographies
As a slight aside, but relevant to cartographic typologies, there is a form of cartography that sits just outside the norms and conventions in many respects; a tool in research and discovery. Mapping the unknown, the unseeable, the imaginary, the liminal, the hidden, the uncanny, the beyond, the elsewhere… the estranged! In these fields, cartography is used as one of many tools, the resultant ‘map’ often unknown; outputs determined and shaped by process.
I highlight the work of academic practitioners such as Mathew Emmett, with whom I collaborate with on research-focused projects through estranged_space. This is defined by the collaboration of Mathew and myself, expanding a transdisciplinary approach across architecture, art, cartography, multimedia performance and visual communication. The practice subjects spaces to closer examination, understanding and (re)interpretation.
A wide range of tools and techniques are deployed to explore the notions of perception, (re)interpretation, narrative, place and non-place, with particular experience in site-responsive interventions in spaces which are contested, unsettling, hidden, lost, peripheral or displaced. Applied learning and research is extended across a wider spatial practice that also concerns itself with the agency of mapping. The topologies of space, of real and yet imagined worlds — the near and the elsewhere — looking for narratives within spaces to amplify, re-present and re-frame them.
Arguably, you might say this work falls into the abstract map typology, but I make the distinction here as the ‘map’ (spatial representation) emerges through process rather than design.
Cartographic Affordance
A somewhat academic term, but ‘affordance’ is defined as the capabilities and potential uses that an entity or a process can offer, in this case, cartography. Framing the innumerable ways a creator or user can engage with a map(s), and how the communication process ebbs and flows is very difficult to define in a single and succinct statement. Maps and map-making afford enormous opportunities to affirm, direct, discover, represent, reveal, transport… and so much more.
Today, we have ready access to a plethora of enabling technologies, where the user needs no knowledge or understanding to create and produce. As such, the ‘mapscape’ reveals a lot of ignorance around the subject of cartography, and in some cases, even from main stream mapping providers. For example, a cartogram is a very distinct and well-known map type that has existed for 150 years, yet Mapbox describes its map colouring schema as ‘cartogram’. Ignoring established cartographic knowledge and convention is simply stupid and causes confusion. Sadly, this is also proof that technologists lead the way, rather than subject experts. A problem that is widespread.
A Way Through the Woods
Cartography, a complex subject with many tools, can be overwhelming. First principles are crucial, but in today’s age, understanding one’s subject before starting is often neglected, making it difficult to navigate the field.
I cannot reiterate enough how important it is to fully engage with cartography as a subject if you intend to create maps. You wouldn’t try and fix anything without a manual. I’ve stopped counting the articles I’ve read, and presentations I’ve attended, where the author/speaker talks about new approaches and/or innovative techniques that are, in fact, nothing more than a ‘reinvention of the wheel’. If they had done a bit of research in to their subject they would have realised we have been here before and in fact that innovation was already in existence, sometimes for a very long time! I’ve been in practice long enough to see things going full circle, more than once!
Another sign of the times with established disciplines, such as cartography, is the trend for (re)inventing itself in order to assert a new significance; geovisualisation, spatial information design, et al. However, all (red)definitions are firmly rooted in traditional cartographic theory and practice. That said, in one sense they perhaps better reflect different times and ways of working where it seems disciplines must continuously morph and adapt to justify their existence and reflect multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways of working.
Transdisciplinary Practice
Undoubtedly, the enabling of technology and the availability of powerful creative tools, has injected a lot of new thinking in to the discipline of cartography. The plethora of research and publications from those in other disciplines, such as architecture, on the application of cartography in practice supports this resurgence. However, again, as noted earlier, sometimes this does no more than reinvent the wheel. For some reason, cartography, as a theoretical subject, is treated like an ancient and dead tradition needing to be reinvented and claimed by a more dominant discipline.
New disciplines and subjects, such as landscape urbanism, are claiming much of the ground once occupied by cartography, and redefining it. This is somewhat inevitable as transdisciplinary practice is becoming much more the norm; applying learning and experience across different disciplines to achieve new outcomes. It’s just a shame there is often a lack of acknowledgement.
Spatial Information Design
Cartography has always [ naturally ] been one of the purest forms of information design, though itself, a recently emerged discipline. Therefore, it’s a natural assumption to describe cartography as a form of ‘spatial information design’.
“Spatial information design is a multidisciplinary approach that combines data visualisation, GIS, and design principles to analyse, interpret, and represent spatial relationships and patterns in physical and virtual environments.”
This innovative field, newly emerged from the intersection of cartography, information design, and urban planning, evolved to address complex spatial challenges in contemporary society, though clearly extends beyond this. I have started to refer to my practice as spatial information design in order to fully capture my range of outputs. Whilst I have a strong position on the on the discipline of cartography, I also feel it helps to strengthen its significance and role in the current age. That said, I still call myself a cartographer… I just cannot let go!
In Summary
This isn’t a comprehensive guide to cartography, but rather a few thoughts on cartography, practice, and the theory-practice dichotomy based on four decades of experience. Some may disagree, while others may relate. I may even change my mind on a few things; I’m open to new ideas.