14
MaP Design
journals published articles on map projections and the history of maps, but little on
symbols and nothing on design. This changed after World War II.
In 1938, the primary cartography textbook in the United States was Erwin
Raisz’s (pronounced Royce)
General Cartography. Raisz’s book emphasized practi-
cal aspects and he believed that the lectures of a cartography course should concern
history and the laboratory portion should be focused on lettering and the use of
drafting instruments.
After the war, a geography graduate student, Arthur Robinson, who had headed
the mapping division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war, returned
to his studies at Ohio State University. His dissertation topic was unusual in that it
dealt with map design. The dissertation was published as
The Look of Maps in 1952
and was considered groundbreaking. It covered such subjects as color, typography,
and map structure. Robinson accepted a teaching position at the University of Wis-
consin and began a research program that stressed how maps worked. Dissertations
carried out under Robinson were often psychophysical
studies of symbols such as
graduated circles and isopleths. Robinson wrote the primary cartography textbook
of the last half of the 20th century,
Elements of Cartography, which went through
six editions from 1953 to 1995.
In the same period, other cartographers who had been involved in mapping dur-
ing World War II took teaching positions at universities and cartography began to
emerge as a discipline. Two of those cartographers, George Jenks, at the University of
Kansas, and John Sherman, at the University of Washington, and their students also
carried out research on how maps function.
Technology
By the 1960s new technology was revolutionizing the field. Computer programs were
being devised that could create maps from digital data. The Harvard Laboratory
for Computer Graphics introduced SYMAP in the 1960s. Although the maps were
crude, the potential could be seen. In the early days the only printers were line print-
ers that operated as automatic typewriters and all symbols on the map were made up
of alphanumeric characters (Figure 1.9). SYMAP maps were of little use for presenta-
tion, but they did permit rapid spatial representation and analysis of data.
Another major
technological impact was remote sensing. Aerial photographs
had been widely used during World War II and before, but with the advent of satel-
lites and sensors a wealth of high-resolution imagery became available. We take for
granted the satellite imagery displayed on weather reports and we track hurricanes
from our living rooms, but this wasn’t possible until the last third of the 20th century.
This imagery is a part of our mapping data.
The concepts for
geographic information systems date to the 1930s when geo-
graphical analysis was carried out by placing information on a series of clear plastic
layers. Modern GIS utilizes virtual layers in analysis.
Philosophical Factors
In the past 50 years our ideas about cartography have changed and new approaches
to making and studying maps have appeared.
introduction 15
COMMUniCaTiOn THeORY
The research of Robinson, Jenks, Sherman, and their students conducted incorpo-
rated ideas coming from
communication theory. “How do I say what to whom and is
it effective?” (Koeman, 1971) was one of the questions they were asking. This think-
ing was quite different from that of earlier days when cartographers made maps with
little concern for how the reader would perceive the map. Instead, in the communica-
tion paradigm, the cartographer asked what the reader would get from the map and
whether the map would effectively convey the cartographer’s message.
Individual
symbols, such as graduated circles and isopleths, were tested for effectiveness. Today,
such research is still being carried out for animated maps and multimedia maps.
VisUaLizaTiOn PaRaDigM
By the 1990s some criticized the communication approach to cartography, seeing the
methodology as a search for a single optimum representation. Sophisticated computer
programs had been developed that permitted interactive exploration of data and the
visualization paradigm was introduced. Like GIS, visualization is not an entirely new
concept. If we define visualization as a private activity that involves exploring data to
discover unknowns, then thematic cartographers have been involved in visualization
for a very long time. Early visualizations were not done with the aid of a computer,
but with tracing paper and colored pencils while the cartographer examined the data
and experimented with representations. With the advent of computers and the rise of
scientific visualization, the change was logical.
