In praise of insets

Sky News reports on the Scottish politician Tavish Scott (real name) as he proposes a ban on maps that use an inset to show Shetland. Utter nonsense.

His reasoning is that the 'islands should be in the right place on the map' and 'to ensure that in future that government publications and documents do reflect the reality of Scotland in terms of its geography, and not something that fits neatly on an A4 sheet of paper.'

Well let's just break down (sorry, I mean utterly destroy) his preposterous statements. Shetland (The Shetland Isles) is a part of Scotland. It's also part of Great Britain...and the British Isles... and the United Kingdom (and at the time of writing at least, Europe). The following usefully clarifies the terminology:

So in that sense it has a rightful place on any map of which any of those jurisdictions is the focus.

If you're not aware of where Shetland is in the world then this should help (map to scale, UK National Grid):

In simple geographical terms Shetland is approximately 130 miles from mainland Scotland though it's also on the same line of latitude as Bergen on the west coast of Norway at a distance of 200 miles. That's where it sits. At a nice northerly 60° 9' 11" N and 1° 8' 58" W. We can argue all you like whether it should be part of Scotland or, perhaps, a bit of waste left over from Slartibartfast's design of the Norwegian coastline but for now, it gets put on maps of Scotland and any other that includes Scotland. And that makes it a pain in the arse for cartographers.

By the way, did anyone spot I deleted France from the map above? Guess that'd annoy the French too but whatever, I doubt the scots or Scott cares much about that little cartographic editorial decision.

Anyway, as the scot, Scott, says, many maps are made on A4 (or any A series piece of paper where the length and width are in the same proportion). So here's the above map proportioned as A4:

The area outside the yellow line is superfluous to the map as the Republic of Ireland is irrelevant on many maps that show thematic data for Great Britain and Northern Ireland (or UK etc). So as a rough estimate the page only uses approximately 60% of its overall space to show the mapped content.

Put another way, we need a fifth of the entire page (above the green line) just to get Shetland on. That's Shetland, population 22,000. Or, in geographical terms, an island that is 566 sq miles which is 8x larger than the City of Glasgow but which has 27x fewer people. So you're making a decision to allow geography to not only influence the design but take an inordinately exaggerated status simply by virtue of position.

Now, admittedly there's lots of lovely space for titles and legends and all the other crap we put on a map but, nevertheless, it's wasteful. But that's what you'd have to do if you want Shetland on the map, on that proportion of paper, in its correct geographical position. Alternatively, as Scott bemoans, cartographers will often use an inset and you'd end up with a map like this:

This fits the map to the paper (not the paper to the map). And there's far less wasteful space. Far less prominence to unpopulated swathes of water. And yet Shetland gets its own little special place on the map, with the addition of a neat border that clearly demarcates it. Often, Shetland is even exaggerated in scale to make the inset worthwhile. I bet you didn't notice but in the example above Shetland is about 25% bigger than it really is. So, if Scott wants Shetland back in its proper geographical location then he can have it reduced back to its real size too.

Insets are a neat solution and one that has served print mapping well for centuries. It's also a solution that people understand. You could add a small arrow and distance marker to point to where the inset exists in reality. Many even use a marked graticule to show clearly the lines of latitude and longitude that apply to the inset to make it clear that it differs from that of the main map. Even the Sky News article showed an historical example that clearly uses this technique (and note how exaggerated in size Shetland is on this too):

There's other considerations...

Returning to the City of Glasgow. In fact, any relatively populous place. They suffer horrendously on any maps of thematic data because large areas, perhaps relatively uninhabited or sparsely populated take visual prominence. Scotland is a great example. Its total population is around 5.3 million yet 1 million of them live in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Their population densities are far more than the far greater share of Scottish land, including Shetland. So why give such visual prominence to sparsely populated areas?

Insets are not just used to move geographically awkward places. They are commonly used to create larger scale versions of the map for smaller, yet more densely populated places. Often they are positioned over sparsely populated land to use space wisely. I'm guessing Scott would have an objection to an inset that, to his mind, would exaggerate the geographical importance of Glasgow compared to Shetland. Yet...in population terms it's a place of massively greater importance so one could argue it deserves greater relative visual prominence on the map. Many maps are about people, not geography.

In addition to moving Shetland south to make better use of map space, you could very well argue that you should use a cartogram to give far better relative visual prominence to the places where more people live and work. Now that will utterly delight Scott as it completely distorts geography. Not only could you have Shetland moved, but squished to an almost unrecognisable shape. Here you go Tavish...enjoy this beauty of population totals morphing geography (courtesy: worldmapper.org):

Whatever your view of insets (and Scott's is incorrect), there's so many valuable uses for them that counter the problems of geography making it awkward to make maps. Generations of cartographers have come up with novel solutions to many, if not all, of these dilemmas about what to show, where and how. And if the map has an overarching location map showing everything in its correct position then there can be absolutely no confusion whatsoever.

I would guess Scott would equally be horrified if Shetland was seen poking outside the graticule or neatline on an atlas page too - another common way in which maps break the rules of either geography or design in a creative way to simplify and communicate. He'd be delighted by this classic Times Atlas of the World page showing Shetland in its correct position as part of The British Isles but horrors of horrors...Rockall (also a part of Scotland so has equal rights on a map based on Scott's nonsense...but ignore the more northerly Faroe Islands, not part of Scotland) slips off the left edge:

And what of digital maps? Scott seems to be stuck in the age of print cartography because insets are rarely, if ever, a requirement in digital cartography. Everywhere exists where it is. The map is slippy and you can pan and zoom to your heart's content. Want to see a densely populated area? Zoom right on in. In fact, whisper it quietly in case Scott is listening but...if he uses the standard Web Mercator web map he not only gets Shetland in its rightful position AND it's also exaggerated in size compared to the southerly latitudes of mainland England by virtue of the projection. Now isn't that the map he really wants?

Update  4th October 2018

As BBC News reports Mr Scott has got his way and a bill has been passed that includes a 'mapping requirement' that Shetland not be placed in a box. Fortunately there's a clause allowing cartographers to use an inset if they have a case to do so...so that's OK then because there's always a case to do so UNLESS you're making a navigational chart where distance, direction and bearings are obviously the paramount need for the map's properties and design to support. But all this really means is time wasted and taxes used up as map-makers submit their case to use an inset for Shetland.

So, where do we go from here? If Alaska and Hawaii find out about this nonsense then it's going to make future US maps rather interesting. And please don't get the Falkland Islands worked up and starting to assert their right to be included on maps of the UK. As a British Overseas Territory, they, along with the rest, may very well start insisting they should be on the map, in the correct location. So, here's your updated map Mr Scott. Shetland is in the right place but you can't see it any more because we've had to include all the British Overseas Terretories as well. Sorry about that but they all have an equal right. I do hope you appreciate it's a useless map for showing important geographies of the UK though. That's what the new 'mapping requirement' law promotes - bloody ridiculous mapping.

Too much rain for a rainbow

National Weather Service today updated its rainbow colour scheme because of the unprecedented deluge caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

#Harvey in perspective. So much rain has fallen, we've had to update the color charts on our graphics in order to effectively map it. pic.twitter.com/Su7x2K1uuz

— NWS (@NWS) August 28, 2017

Bravo for NWS in modifying its cartographic approach given a change in the phenomena it's mapping. Except they didn't do a very good job.

Old:

New:

The previous classification had 13 classes. the new one simply adds two more at the top end to deal with larger rain totals. In fact, all they've done is added detail to the 'greater than 15 inches' class and sub-divided it into three classes '15-20', '20-30' and 'greater than 30'. It'd be pedantic of me to note they still have overlapping classes (they do) but the bigger problem is they retained the same rainbow colour scheme and then added two more colours...a brighter indigo and then a pale pink.

Does that light pink area in the new map above look more to you? Or perhaps a haven of relative stillness and tranquility amongst the utter chaos of the disaster?  Yes, the colours are nested and so we can induce increases and decreases simply through the natural pattern - but the light pink could just as easily be seen as a nested low set of values than the more it is supposed to represent.

For a colour scheme that is trying to convey magnitude...more rain...more more more, you need a scheme that people perceive as more, more, more too. Different hues do not, perceptually, do that. Light pink does not suggest hideous amounts of rain compared to the dark purples it is supposed to extend.

We see light as less and dark as more. Going through a rainbow scheme where lightness changes throughout (the mid light yellow at '1.5-2.0' inches is a particular problem) isn't an effective method. Simply adding colours to the end of an already poor colour scheme and then making the class representing the largest magnitude the very lightest colour is weak symbology. But then , they've already used all the colours of the rainbow so they're out of options!

The very least they should have done is re-calibrated the classes to make the largest class encompass the new, out-of-all-known-range range. You can't simply add more classes when you're already maxed-out of options for effective symbolisation.

Better still, look around and learn how it should be done. The Washington Post has made a terrific map using a colour scheme that does have a subtle hue shift but whose main perceptual feature is the shift in lightness values. So we see more, more more as the colour scheme gets darker. It's simple. it really is.

The scientific community continues to use poor colour schemes and poor cartography to communicate to the general public. At least the mainstream media is doing a much better job.

[Update 29.8.2017 to include the New York Times piece]

New York Times today published one of the best maps I have seen in a long while. I mean 'best maps' of anything, not just the continuing deluge in Texas. Its simplicity belies its complexity and that's the trick with good cartography. Here's a pretty lo-res grab but go to the site and take a look.

They've got the colours spot on, A slight hue shift to emphasize light to dark but cleverly hooking into the way in which we 'see' deeper water as darker blue. Of course, it isn't really deeper blue but the way light is reflected, refracted and absorbed by water gives us that illusion. So, it acts as a visual anchor that we can relate to.

There's other symbology too - small gridded proportional circles that show the heaviest rainfall in each hour. The map is an animation so this gives a terrific sense of the pulsing nature of the movement of successive waves of rain (literally, waves!). The colours morph towards the higher end as the animation plays to build a cumulative total. This also has the effect of countering the natural change blindness we see when we're trying to recall the proportional symbols.

The two symbols work in harmony. And then, for those who want detail a hover gets you a graph showing the per hour total over the last few days.

These aren't the only maps in the NYT piece. The article is full of them. Each one carefully designed to explore a specific aspect of the disaster: the history of storms, reports, evacuations etc.

It's maps like those from The Washington Post and New York Times that prove that good cartography does exist and it matters. We really don't deserve the sort of maps that NWS pumps out. They're just really awful to look at, fail on a cognitive level and prove they haven't the first clue about how to effectively communicate their own science and data.

The irony is that the NYT map uses the NWS data of the rainfall data to make their own version and prove that it's perfectly possible to make terrific maps that communicate and which once again give us more reasons to #endtherainbow. Well played.

#endtherainbow

Keep the user in mind

I nearly splurged my Corn Flakes all over the breakfast table this morning as I saw various people begin lauding the merits of a new map tool called 'cartogram'. As an avid fan of most forms of cartogram I was immediately interested. Cartograms are hard to make...hard to make well. Was there a new tool to help?

Imagine my surprise when I launched the tool to find it has absolutely sweet FA to do with cartograms. You take a picture, or use one and the map gets 'styled' according to colours in the picture.

Cartogram?

That word cartogram already has a meaning - a map on which statistical information is shown in diagrammatic form That surely couldn't have been too hard to find?  Except Mapbox have re-appropriated the noun as a product that allows you to 'make a map style by dropping an image on the map'.

It doesn't even do that. Style is so much more than just getting an algorithm to take colours from an image and then re-colour basic elements of the map. It allows you to re-colour land, buildings, water, roads and labels. Look, here's a Mona Lisa map style I made:

And this is what happened when I tried to style my map like Google's map:

But my point about it not really being a styling tool is evident when you do want to have some control. This is as close as I could get to Google's Map...and it isn't very close.

Here's my final effort before I got bored...look, it's the Ron Jeremy map:

I'm sure others can be more inventive....

Like I said, style is so much more than basic colouring in by numbers. It's about working with consistent denotation, about placement and typographic control. It's about careful generalization - selection, omission, simplification etc. It's about composition and the human act of making choices to reflect a particular look and feel; a certain aesthetic that ties in with the map's purpose and your desires for the map.

Look, don't get me wrong. It's fun. It's click bait to get you to want to save your map and sign up. I get it. But why can't the thing have a different name. Something that neither sullies a word already in very clear mainstream cartographic use AND something that actually says what the thing does. This isn't the first time there's been a lack of invention in cartographic circles. It wasn't long ago that we saw an entire company decide to truncate its name to an abbreviated form of the word cartography itself. We use the term carto every day, but not to refer to a company.

For my money it's just lazy. It's a lazy choice of name and it's mistakenly suggesting this is what map styling is all about. Come up with a decent name and sell what it is, not what you think you can get away with by corrupting a term that already exists and is well understood. Think of something original. Don't constantly look to take something and try and turn it into some sort of game.

As cartographers are always told, you need to keep the user in mind. With more and more of this sort of bastardization of nomenclature all we do as an industry is confuse the hell out of people.

Just to avoid confusion, here's the entry on cartograms for my forthcoming book. I am not going to change it but I'd recommend it as reading for those who just killed a little piece of cartography with their poor choice of marketing BS. By the way, the book is called Cartography. Because that's what it's about. I also wrote the entry on cartograms for the forthcoming v2.0 of the GIS&T Body of Knowledge. I'm not changing that either.

The NYT election map

It's election time in the US. It has been for well over a year (which is madness in itself) but we're down to the wire now with only a week to go before polling in what must be one of the most hate-fueled, vitriolic contests ever. Lies and misinformation have taken centre-stage but the sad truth is there are people (people who vote) who are easily taken in by lies and misinformation. They are sold it as a version of the 'truth' they can relate to and in which they wholeheartedly believe. And so that's how propaganda becomes reality and how candidates gain disciples. It's often the same with maps because they too sell a version of the truth.

We're arguably on the cusp of something far more important than worrying about a map in a newspaper but to my mind, at least, today's HUGE map in the New York Times warrants some cartonerd attention.

In today's print NYT: the most detailed election map we've ever printed: 30,000+ zip codes across a 4-page spread. pic.twitter.com/yjUHNSEvU2

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) November 1, 2016

It is a truly magnificent piece of work. Large format. Eye-catching. Detailed. The US is a big country so if you want to show 30,000+ zip codes you better make your map big. I am a huge admirer of the New York Times graphics team and their cartographic work but this map, I'm afraid, contributes to the misinformation that has become so toxic this election season. Let's not worry about the periphery because it's the main map that takes centre-stage. It's that image which is defining and the impression that people see.

So what do they see? RED...lots of red. Any map that attempts to summarise a sparsely populated data set into a surface that exhausts space will mislead. It's inevitable. And with the USA, with a very heterogenous population distribution and vast swathes of land with barely a single rattlesnake of voting age it's a problem that is accentuated. The map uses Zip Code Tabulation Areas instead of counties, voting precincts or other geographies. There are problems with how ZCTAs mis-shapes the view but, frankly, any arbitrary boundaries have the same problems - the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem - statistical (and ultimately visual) bias that results with how you aggregate data into areas. The geography is what it is...but rather than perpetuate visually incongruous issues it's beholden on map-makers to deal with it.

For the last few years in my day job I've given a workshop at the Esri International User Conference that takes a single dataset of the 2012 election results and explores a range of about 20 different ways to present the very same data - each of which tells a very different story. Some of the maps can clearly be used to portray a particular dimension of the result and some can be used in deplorable ways (pun intended). Some reveal detail. Some mask it. Some show red. Some blue. You can see the full range of maps here if you're interested. The point of the session is to open people's eyes to the inherent biases that maps contain. What surprises me year on year is that an audience of people heavily invested in geo are equally surprised at the problems we explore. I guess it's to be expected - not every geo-expert is going to be a cartographic expert and they come to the session to learn and that's a great thing. But they are merely a small fraction of the population. The vast majority have no access to this sort of education. More than that - they have no idea they might even benefit from it or that there's a problem with how they read the maps they are served.

It's really a much bigger problem of geographical illiteracy and the lack of the basic need to view maps and graphics critically. With all these much larger issues it therefore becomes crucial for media organisations and those involved in communicating information to be cognisant of the limitations of the consumer. It's not really their fault - we're all born that way and we have a natural tendency to believe what we see, especially if it comes from a so-called reputable, impartial source. Maps should portray reality in a way that deals with the biases people inevitably see - to counter them rather than feed them. You only have to read the comments in reply to the NYT tweet to see how the map has been viewed and interpreted.

The problem with this New York Times map is the country itself which, admittedly, there isn't much they can do about but they could deal with the problem using different maps.  The size of the areas used to summarise the data are unequal. Some are therefore more visually prominent than others. Republicans hold on to large swathes of centrally located territory. Democrats get a shed-load of votes from the smaller, peripheral northeast. Additionally, they contain very different numbers of people so population density is unequal across the map - yet in terms of the symbology, each area is treated the same.

So you end up with large swathes of sparsely populated large areas in the mid-west being seen prominently and very small, densely populated areas on the coasts being seen much less prominently. The problem is compounded by two other factors - colour and focus. Red for republican is a colour that is seen more brightly than blue for Democrat. It is cognitively processed as 'more important'. Our eyes also naturally tend towards the centre of an image and a map on first inspection - so that's our initial focus. this all adds up to one massively misleading picture of the political geography of the USA. It screams REPUBLICAN which given Trump's persistent comments about the corrupt media is either an attempt for NYT to redress the balance or the Russians are to blame. And yellow for the marginal areas? I understand the desire for a neutral colour but in a generally two-horse race (mule, elephant, whatever) adding in other colours paints a different picture as well.

It can be different as these following maps of the 2012 election results, mapped by county, show. Using a value-by-alpha approach that overlays a layer of population density that is symbolised so that sparsely populated areas are more opaque will modify the image. It tunes out sparsely populated areas and brings a little focus to the areas with more people (more voters). All that deep red on the NYT version has now gone. Focus is shifted.

A cartogram does a similar job but by changing the shape of the areas - either warping them in relation to population density (e.g. a population equalising cartogram) or by giving each unit area the same shape (e.g. a hexagon grid). Yes, these are abstract and there's sometimes a challenge understanding the geography but they deal with the problems.

There's even the simple, yet effective, proportional symbol map that often gets overlooked. Symbol overlaps are often hard to reconcile but the symbol sizes do a good job of showing where there is more and where there is less as well as encoding the different colours.

Finally in this small selection of the myriad of alternatives, a dasymetric technique which uses a secondary layer of data into which you can reapportion the data can also show a more accurate distribution of information (e.g. dasymetric dot density) though, of course, any map of population data presented in this way will take on a similar appearance because, well, that's where people live!

Ultimately, there are dozens of different ways that the map can be made. None are 'right' and none are 'wrong' but they all tell different versions of the truth. This isn't cartographic pedantry. It's an important issue because it plays to people's views, opinions and search for the truth. My point here, is that maps can be extremely dangerous graphic tools. The NYT have, in my opinion, contributed to the misinformation that has enveloped this election by publishing this map in the form they chose. It presents a version of the truth that suits a particular view of reality. It is biased and dangerous. It's also too late because it's out there now and is simply just another piece of rhetoric people can use to support their own version of the facts.

By the way, I don't get to vote in the US election but I have lived and worked in the US for 5 years and call it home. Please...do yourselves a favour and go vote. You only have to look at what happened in the UK a few months ago where the vote was to leave Europe...a vote massively impacted because many people failed to turn out to vote who would otherwise have voted not to leave. You can't vote by liking or re-tweeting. Whatever the map says to you...just go and vote and help redraw the one you want.

UPDATE: Since writing this less than an hour ago the Washington Post has published a very well-timed piece entitled Election maps are telling you big lies about small things. They've been advocating cartograms based on one area per electoral college vote which I like. It retains a State-based appearance (which isn't as difficult to read as the population equalising versions) while doing a good job of presenting a visually balanced view of the data. I encourage you to read.

UPDATE 2: And now a good review of past approaches from NYT here. A rebuttal of the criticism they've faced? Maybe. They try and frame the big map as an attempt to look at the way physical geography impacts political patterns. That's a very nuanced way to explore the distribution of voting and I'd still argue that most who read the map will take away one message...more red = more Republican. Seven days out from the election is not the time to be playing with people's inherent perceptual and cognitive bias.

Taste the rainbow - third helpings

If I'm going to have a carto-argument I may as well have it with the President of the United States.

Today, President Obama used this tweet to encourage us to be aware of rising temperatures and the need to stay safe and watch out for others. I have no qualms with the intent but as you'll appreciate, the cartonerd in me got quite irked by the leading statement.

This map says it all. Stay safe as it heats up: Drink water, stay out of the sun, and check on your neighbors. pic.twitter.com/c1qFTmq2IV

— President Obama (@POTUS) July 20, 2016

"This map says it all". Well despite rainbow colour schemes being used to death to map anything and despite people preferring their own facts and telling me everyone understands the scheme I resolutely beg to differ.

I wrote about this problem several times before here, here and here. And so have others here, here and here. Rainbow colour schemes do not work well for numerical data where the analytical task is to determine what is higher and what is lower across the map.

Put simply, our brains do not process colour (strictly speaking hue) in a way that tells us a quantitative difference between them. Different hues (yellow, red, blue etc) work very well for showing qualitative differences on a map. Single hues, that vary from light to dark, or even a dichromatic scheme that blends a couple of colours do a much better job at encoding a quantitative difference.

In the map above, there's no logical consistency in the brightness of the colours. Some stand out more than others. Magenta is arguably the colour we see as the brightest yet there's a sort of light cream colour in there that actually means 'more'...and that's before we get to yellow. Yellow is not 40 degrees hotter than cyan on the spectrum either. Rainbow schemes are not perceptually uniform, they modify meaning beyond what the data supports and create visually false boundaries. You could also easily reverse the scheme and it'd make just as much sense.

The argument that people understand it is borne out of the simple fact they see them every day so they believe they understand them. They're conditioned to them. It's called brainwashing. I get it, We're all liable to a bit of brainwashing from time to time and just because you relate hot with red and cold with blue then it's all good OK?

Well no...because on this map yellow, magenta, a light pink and burgundy is hotter than red which happens to be in the middle of the spectrum. And how hot is green exactly? I've never been green-hot. I would still argue vehemently that without a legend these sort of maps are harder to interpret than they need to be.

Given in every other aspect of life people seem to want the easiest, laziest path of least resistance to something, why they force their brains to interpret rainbows baffles me. More so, the arrogance of constantly using your own facts to contradict cognitive science just shows a complete unwillingness to accept a better way. Hell, rainbow palettes aren't even 508c compliant!

End rainbows! #endtherainbow

Kindergarten Kartography

Over the years I’ve seen many changes in learning in the realm of cartography. I’m going to use this blog post to reflect on those changes and offer some thoughts on the current state of education in cartography as I see it or, more specifically, how it's become monopolized by people with very little cartographic education of their own to speak of.

Many of us in the geo or cartography business, whatever we do, can point to a love of maps in our school-age years. Struggling for motivation to do something else, I took my own love of maps to what I saw as a more serious step by taking a formal qualification when I studied it for a Bachelor’s degree. I had in mind that I wanted to be involved with maps as a career of some sort and getting an education in them was a key component to becoming proficient and, well, qualified!

My degree course was a very vocationally designed course because it had served as an entry point to the UK cartographic industry for decades. A lot of it was practical but the practical techniques were nothing without the theoretical and conceptual understanding we were taught alongside. Of course, history now shows that many of the techniques I learnt (scribing, photo-mechanical production etc) are long gone and if truth were told, the course was probably lagging behind the technology at the time as computers were replacing many functions of the cartographic process. This is a fairly typical scenario as University courses still struggle to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology.

As I graduated, the UK cartographic industry was rapidly shrinking as GIS exploded onto the landscape. But while the technology has changed profoundly, many of those key ideas, concepts, theories and abilities to critically evaluate have changed very little. The technical and practical aspects were quite honestly the most trivial aspect of my degree. It was the thinking and the development of a cartographic mind that was the most important aspect. Of course, at the time we though just making a decent looking map would get us a good grade. Often that was the case but rarely did we really appreciate that our tutors were actually grading what was going on behind the map…not what the end product looked like. I used to use a pen and scribing tool. I have coded maps before and now I work with servers and portals and other ‘stuff’….increasing animations and 3D. Anyway, the point is, we can easily pick up new ways of doing but picking up the thinking behind the doing isn’t a trivial learning task.

So I loved maps and wanted to better understand them and how they were made. But more than that – I wanted to prepare myself for entering the workforce doing something I loved. And in deciding upon that, the logical step is to do your research and find out where and who is going to give you the best education. I was going to go to Swansea University to do their Topographic Science degree but I ended up going to Oxford Polytechnic. Like most people looking for higher education, University was a logical step. I wanted to learn from the best; people who had been there and done it and who had their own qualifications as badges of authority and experience in cartography. My tutors were internationally known and contributed to cartography in academic and industrial settings. I went to arguably the top place for budding cartographers because I wanted a high quality education and to join the pantheon of cartographers who could point to their alma mater as a badge of quality. The best I could get from masters in the area to set my career up in the best way I could.

As I entered an academic career I soon began learning how to teach and how to be a researcher. Pedagogy became a very important component of my professional life. I had learnt domain knowledge during my degree studies and the mindset of lifelong learning means that I still learn every day. I had practical ability yet the practice of cartography was already rapidly changing and I never used photomechanical production techniques in a real workplace. As an academic I probably wasn’t as practiced as I could have been (a common accusation of teachers generally) but the skills and techniques of being able to teach and lecture were vitally important. I took courses in pedagogic theory and various diplomas. Over the next 20 or so years the process of lifelong learning you acquire as a professional academic meant I kept abreast of current thinking to inform my domain knowledge, my practical abilities and changes in pedagogy. You never become a finished article either in domain knowledge or the ability to teach but knowing how to question and, importantly, to find out the bits you don’t know is important. You also learn an awful lot about people and how to help, encourage or push people to achieve their own goals. Teaching has its very own set of vitally important skills over and above the content.

So where’s this going?

Ultimately, I left academia because I was tired of the admin and bureaucracy. I really enjoyed teaching my students and helping them realize their own passion in mapping. Sometimes I’d lose some along the way because they actually weren’t that interested. Some now have very successful careers in geo and that makes me proud. Some teach…some teach cartography. I stay in touch with many of them. During my academic life I went to many conferences and I could be absolutely certain each would have a panel or a discussion on pedagogic approaches to teaching geography/cartography/GIS/whatever. The format was largely the same. Often it was the same people. The outcomes were normally the same…largely boring summaries of the need for more…better…free…blah blah blah yackity schmackity. Alongside this in the literature, debates raged about the fashion for degrees that were focused on theory to become more vocational and vice versa. The training vs teaching argument was well worn. With heavily practical disciplines like GIS (whether it was ever a discipline at all was another debate entirely) should we be teaching concepts? Should people always have to learn using ArcGIS? Was a broad spectrum of software important to know? Were courses simply driving schools for buttonology? The debates were endless but one thing that characterized them was that rarely did people start from the last end point or argument. They just started again rather than consider the wider context. Their own narrow empire was their only concern. They did one thing very well and that became their very own ivory tower – the pinnacle of knowledge and learning for others to find and believe in.

Towards the end of my time at Kingston University myself and colleagues were well travelled, often leading sessions for other lecturers and academics in the UK on how to teach GIS, or cartography, or mobile mapping fieldwork. We were seen as leading in both discipline, practice and pedagogy. We received numerous research grants for developing technical innovations. We were researching and mapping social media feeds and taking advantage of them in teaching and learning nearly 10 years ago and helping others devise their own approaches for instance.

So have things changed?

The mapping landscape has changed profoundly. New software. New companies or organisations. Free and open data and software. Everything is quicker with social media feeding an endless daily appetite for something, anything, that people consume as ‘new’ (which often isn’t but that’s also a different tale). One person does x, the next responds with y. One person colours their OpenStreetmap in one fashionable way, another makes a hand-drawn version and yet another still does some crazy psychedelic trippy animated thing. All fun in the kiddie’s sandpit but what about outside the sandpit where the real world of mapping exists; where making a version of a basemap in an arty style actually doesn’t cut it for any practical purpose?

Things haven’t really changed and so the disconnect between theory, practice and praxis widens. I’ve seen panel discussions at recent conferences that have opened up the same tired debates, just with different people ignoring what’s gone before. We’ve largely solved the pedagogic debates about training vs teaching. It’s out there (in the literature) if one cares to find it but of course it totally destroys people who want to be seen as innovators to not be seen to be carefully considering this stuff. The discussions are repetitive and say more about the naivety of the panelists rather than their depth of understanding of either their chosen domain or pedagogy. They love playing in the sandpit but the tantrums start as soon as someone wants to play more seriously.

What I have observed is that the players involved are very different to those of 10, 20, 30 and more years ago in terms of the cartographic domain. Cartography seems to have become a past-time rather than either an academic subject or a professional vocation. Many involved in making maps are doing so from a background of education in anything but cartography yet they’re found a passion for making maps. They want to be seen as makers and doers and that is sufficient. Most of this is due to the burgeoning availability of data and the internet as a powerful democratizing tool. Cartographic technology has shifted so rapidly that it’s hard to conceive of someone now wanting to take a Bachelors degree in it. It doesn’t conjure up the image of a real subject any more. It’s been demoted to what a hacker might do with a couple of spare hours and a Mac Book in Starbucks.

So what courses do people want to study to gain qualifications in? It’s pretty much anything but cartography because you can now get your cartography from the internet or from meet-ups or from anywhere but an institution which is set up to deliver education. But the craziness of this situation is that many people who now purport to be fine purveyors of map education sought expert tuition for their own non-cartographic qualifications at some point. Yet now, they’re shouting loudly about how they are now best-placed to offer cartographic training. Let’s be clear – I’m happy for anyone to offer advice and training and help in areas they have some level of knowledge or expertise in but there’s no substitute to learning from experts – people who are experienced, have deep domain knowledge and have played beyond the sand pit. The mantra of beginners for beginners doesn’t cut it. Students in a Bachelors class being taught by an intern or teaching assistant is no substitute for the Professor. They have the merit and background to support and lead learning. They can assess the quality of work against expected norms and relative work. Not everything is super cool or awesome. Some work is, frankly, awful and you’re doing people an injustice by telling them simply by taking part you are becoming proficient or an expert in either domain knowledge or practical ability. As a lecturer I was happy giving fail grades. I was also happy giving grades well into the 90% and higher range. The variation was huge. Not everyone excelled. Some had natural talent, some worked hard to achieve. Grades reflected ability and outcome. I was only able to understand how to assess and comment on quality because I knew my subject and knew how to support teaching and learning through an understanding of pedagogy. By all means go and enjoy the colouring in with computers at a local meet-up and figure out a little trick that makes a task easier – but do not be fooled into thinking this equates to expertise.

And how did this dumbing down of cartographic education and the rise of kindergarten kartography come about? Because of the admin and bureaucracy I so hated. The documents, forms and paperwork that we had to complete to get a new or revised course up and running were horrific. We had to get industrial reviews. We had to pass the work across many other academic and practitioner’s desks. We had term reviews, semester reviews, annual reviews, quinquennial reviews and validation and re-validation events at which external people would pour over ever small item of our plans to check it and assure themselves of the standards it sets. That’s how proper education works. Checking and cross-checking and review after review after review. That was how, ultimately, we could stand in front of students and know we were delivering top class content in a modern, stimulating, caring and professional environment. All of that developmental work gave assurances to the student too. When we could claim most graduates got jobs in the field on graduation we were not making vacuous statements. We knew what we were delivering was what industry and society wanted and needed. We had their buy-in. We were meeting government-set targets for qualified and able graduates. We also kept pace with developments to ensure students were at least on the curve if not as much ahead of it as we could make it. Proper education leading to proper qualifications that were the student’s license to demonstrate they had a proper qualification in the subject they studied. A subject that had an avowed intent to marry domain knowledge with practical skills; to develop knowledge and understanding; a critical and evaluative approach; and a desire for lifelong learning. But too many people have become fed up with this requirement as they search for a quick fix. Taking time to learn something is not seen as a requirement for becoming an expert. Playing the long game is no longer regarded by many as a wholesome approach to learning and by many of the current crop of people who claim to offer educational or training services they do so based on a complete lack of quality assurance that anyone can rely on.

This is why I find today’s trend for short-form online learning and meet-ups as being heralded as THE place to learn cartography so dispiriting. Many of these people seem unaware of so much both in domain knowledge and pedagogy. They’ve rarely gone through any education or training in cartography so their badges are from other disciplines yet they now claim to be the carto-educators of choice. Frankly it’s a tough job to counter that culture precisely because so many formal courses are no longer offered but it doesn’t make it right. It simply doesn’t stack up. You can’t want a qualification from one set of experts then profess to others you’re one in some other subject. MOOCs, I feel, are a special case and most people seem to avoid the reality that many are done as loss-leaders to whet people’s appetite and get them sufficiently interested to take a fee-paying version of the course. Universities do it. Corporations do it. You hardly see any reading lists any more either – the ability to use Google seems to be the only requirement for an inquisitive mind. If content isn’t already online then it’s all too often seen as irrelevant.

Of course, much of this has to do with the death of cartography in the classroom. It’s inevitable people seek education from people offering it and if the traditional arena has dried up then of course motivated individuals and groups will see a gap in the market they feel they can fill. And I am part of that problem because I’d had enough of University life and the crap that got in the way. But I also hope that reaching an audience through various blogs and by continuing to go to conferences and meetings helps others. I’m also writing a book…yes, a real, live book to support much more than the return to button-pushing that current quasi-carto-educators seem to have returned to (side-note…you know, coding is also just button pushing by a different form. I don’t care whether you change the colour of a highway using CSS, javascript or a GUI). And, of course, people love ‘free’ and so free meetups with free content led by people who don’t charge for their time and where free pizza or beer is offered as enticement are bound to be a win win. Except what many don’t seem to realize is it’s a false economy. My suggestion is do some research and ask around. If you want to know something about cartography and really want to get an education in it, seek out a professional who has a background domain and pedagogic knowledge. In the UK I’d look at UCL, City University, Leicester or Nottingham University. In the US, just go check out Penn State, University of Madison-Wisconsin or Oregon State University. Of course, others exist but I’m just picking out a few places to start. Get your qualifications from relevant experts and not from the market stall purveyors who are offering knock-off merchandise. It might look like a good deal but it’ll probably break after a week or two. Get your background in cartography and don’t see Kindergarten Kartography as a sufficient substitute.

As a final thought I do want to be absolutely clear that I'm happy for everyone to have a go at making maps as I have said numerous times before. I'm also more than happy for people to pass on tips, tricks and nuggets of advice via many different forms. I use this sort of advice and self-learning ever day to supplement what I know and to learn from others. Don't mistake this discussion as some sort of claim that no-one is allowed to utter anything about cartography unless they've put in 40 years and have multiple badges of honour. That would be absurd. There is a place for everyone to contribute to the wider realm of cartographic understanding. It's just that the balance has gone. I feel we've tipped into a dangerous area where people are getting hooked on relatively appealing and accessible fayre masquerading as quality assured content. Get hooked on the good stuff and you'll find it sustains you much further than the local sand pit.

And by the way, next time you're at a conference watching a panel discussion on the topic of Cartographic education just step back and think about whether the panelists really have the chops.

Bend it like Mercator

After their win in the Champions League final yesterday, the 101 Great Goals blog published a piece on the relative location of FC Barcelona's triumvirate of South American strikers. They picked up a map from Reddit that showed their birthplaces as being positioned in such a way that you can draw a perfectly straight line between them on Google Maps.

Here's the map:

A headline writer's dream...arguably the three best strikers in the world all born in formation as well as playing in formation for the world's best team. An easy map to make...take a pen and draw a line across the map to link three red symbols, each of which is about 50 miles in diameter in real world units. Job done.

Except the map is incorrect...which makes the headline potentially incorrect too. A straight line between two places on the globe becomes a curved line when projected using Web Mercator (which the Google Map used by the author is in this case). You cannot simply draw a straight line on the map and infer that it represents a straight line on the curved surface of the globe - because it doesn't.

Here's what the line looks like on a virtual globe as if looking from Messi's birthplace to Neymar's birthplace:

And when we place that line back onto a projected flat map, here's the outcome:

The line now has a slight curve to it but with symbols about 10 miles in diameter it still just nicks the edge of the town where Suarez was born. If I'd used smaller symbols I could have shown the line doesn't pass through Salto, Uruguay. If I'd used big red blobs like the original then of course the line would pass through Salto. Built correctly, we not only get an accurate map...but one that supports the story even better!

OK, we're talking small margins here but the author of the original map got very lucky simply because of the quirk of geography relating to the three players he chose to link on the map. Because the three locations are relatively close to one another (in global terms) and they are also only 30 degrees or so south of the equator we don't see a massive distortion in the line. It has a curve, yes...but only a slight one.

But what if we look at three other footballers? Wayne Rooney was born in Croxteth, Liverpool. Harry Kewell in a Sydney suburb in Australia; and C. V. Pappachan, the famous (?) former Indian footballer born in Thrissur. Here's their map:

As far as I know there is nothing at all to link these three footballers but if we'd taken the mapping approach used to link Barcelona's strikers we'd also get a perfect straight line passing from Liverpool in the UK, all the way to Sydney, Australia via Thrissur on the southern tip of India.

If you got in a plane and flew the straight line route between the UK and Sydney the closest you get to Thrissur is about 2,500 miles. The red line shows the planar version of a straight line projected on Web Mercator. I included the Barcelona striker's line for scale which shows that smaller distances, particularly near the equator, 'appear' less curvier.

News aggregators, blogs and, well, pretty much anyone should question maps. They lie. They are terrible at telling porkies. Worse. Most map readers don't know they're being fed a lie because they look authoritative; and they don't know that the maker of the map they're looking at didn't know the pitfalls of their approach either.

As it turns out, Barça's strikers do happen to have been born close enough to almost lie in a straight line on the globe and on the map. The curve on the projected map tells the accurate story. Try telling the story using three other footballers who appear to have been born along a straight line on a map and chances are, they weren't.

Hat Tip to Brian Timoney for the tweet about this map.

Needless lines in the sand

I just read a blog post from Andrew Hill, a guy whose work I admire greatly, entitled In defense of burger cartography. Go have a read if you've not already done so then come back...I've got a few things to say.

I've been quite vocal in my annoyance with many so-called new cartographers and their general fancy for creating needless dividing lines between their self-defined fresh approach and pretty much everything that ever went before. They tend to eschew previous thinking, research, technologies and people and view this as a huge positive. I'm afraid I read Andrew's blog in very much the same vein so here's a few quotes I've extracted that I'd respectfully like to contest:

"time to fall in love with maps again"
You'll likely find most of us never fell out of love with them. Is this perhaps just a rallying cry to further support the belief that all this new stuff is unequivocally super awesome? Cartography has always been great. I'm glad so many are finally finding it too but c'mon...join the club, don't try and start a new one.

"what I'm seeing has never been talked about before"
I'd strongly refute this observation. Most of what I see has been done before and has been talked about before. It's more likely that the people who offer this view simply aren't familiar with what's gone before or don't care to look beyond their own limited experience. Sure, technology is evolving and there's some new ways of making maps but largely we've seen it before in some shape or other. What is perhaps true is that many weren't around when it was done before but we have books and such like to reference. And why is it that people like me pipe up with blogs? It's precisely because we want to expose these very same people to stuff some of us already know. That's not being elitist...it's about knowledge transfer and sharing. It's why I enjoyed being a lecturer for so long and why I now enjoy teaching about maps from within a different type of organisation. It's also why I wrote a daily blog last year to expose people to stuff they may not have seen before. The trouble is that it's a two-way process and does require people to want to learn and I'm afraid I find far too many who simply think they already know it all. None of us do. And the other reason why many perceive that so much hasn't been talked about before...because they don't inhabit the same places that many others inhabit so there's an immediate disconnect. I rarely see new-mapmakers at any of the established cartographic conferences where much of this stuff has been talked about for years (actually, NACIS in the US tends to buck this trend and to be absolutely fair to Andrew I did meet him at a NACIS conference a couple of years ago). But more generally...new mapmakers tend to inhabit a world of meetups and hangouts and don't go to where cartographers have historically tended to hang out. They are unlikely to be seen at the International Cartographic Conference for instance and that has to be by choice. Wouldn't it be so much better for us to all meet in the same sort of places where we can share knowledge, research, learn some rules and break some others? I know many of the established conferences and other meetings have been very keen to embrace new map-makers but take-up has been low. By the way...this year it's in Rio in August...maybe I'll see you there along with 1,000 or so other people who love maps?

"maps shouldn't remain difficult to create just because old school software hadn't been brought up to speed with modern technology"
Another fallacy. I recall a fantastic piece of software called Atlas Mapmaker I used (and taught with) for thematic mapping in the early 1990s. It was brilliant. I used it alongside Arc/Info and IDRISI. Each brought different things to the table. Sadly, Atlas Mapmaker is no more but other software has come and gone in its place and I think it's wrong to suggest there's a divide between old school software and other newer software. In the last 5 years more mapping software has come along too. So what do we class as 'old school'? I'm guessing this is a reference to software that's been around a fair while but look through the history books and you'll find it morphs, changes and updates regularly. It doesn't just keep pace, it sets standards. Yep, every now and again something new pops up and offers something a little different but I'd suggest that those who like to bash the so-called old-school software likely have never properly used it; they likely prefer to hate for hating's sake; and more than anything like the idea of being seen as new and exciting alongside something they proclaim as new and exciting. Let me put it like this...if you're SwissTopo there's software you use and software you don't use. Journalists might prefer a different approach. It's all fine and as I've said before I use many different pieces of software to make maps and don't feel the need to define and demarcate how I make maps by buttonology. After all, software is a tool that helps you get something done. Without knowledge of concepts, practice and a strong appreciation of the rich tapestry of cartography you're going to have to be pretty lucky to hit those buttons correctly enough to make a decent map. Maps have never been difficult to create. You just need time to figure out how to make it and what's going to help you make it. Knowing something about cartography gives you way more than the tool you use to make the map. It empowers you to know what you're doing, how to design and, crucially, which rules you are able to bend and break more than others. That said, yes of course we should expect modern software to take advantage of modern technology and it should also push what's possible. If I still had to use PC Arc/Info 3.4D to make maps I'd suggest we've not progressed very far. Except it has progressed. So has every other piece of software too.

"goodbye old world"
Why? If we always threw away what went before we'd be in a scientific and artistic wasteland. Build on the past and embrace the future would be my preference.

"people often get self-referentialy dogmatic about some previously decided laws of cartography"
I'm guessing I'm included in this accusation. Saying that rainbow colours are poor choices on some map types or that it's important to normalize data on a choropleth is neither self referential or dogmatic. It's fact. It's in books. It's based on research. It's the sort of established practice that helps us make better decisions when we make maps. That's all. No-one ever called them a law. It's called best practice and the reason I bang on about it is because so many people don't get it. Sure, lots of stuff can be challenged and that's fine but let's not set out to decry the essence of well established, useful knowledge and understanding. There's a language to graphicacy that has evolved and helps guide us regardless of what our individual motivation for making a map is.  And while we're on about rules and conventions here's where I get a little confused. Many new mapmakers make their maps using code. Now those who know me know my coding skills are not what they used to be and I'm impressed by people who want to code their maps and who do so. Code requires rules and conventions. If you don't follow the rules and conventions your code will likely not work or perform poorly. If everyone ignored the basic rules and conventions it'd be anarchy and you'd all be calling each other out on github over rotten, unusable and unhelpful code. There's a practice; a syntax; a best practice to writing elegant and purposeful code. Of course, not all code is written equally just as not every map is made the same, but whether you want to call them laws or simply see things as best practice it helps to have guides. So I wonder why the sort of people who are happy to abide by general rules that govern coding in a particular way seem more than happy to tell us that cartographic code, rules and best practice are simply there to be broken. If that isn't double standards then what is?

"like many other fields, cartography is changing fast"
Sure is! But what exactly is this change? Conventional commentary suggests it's that technology allows us to do more, more easily. But is it easier to make maps than before? Let me go back to Atlas Mapmaker...I could make a map in minutes using that from a simple text file out of Excel. Sound familiar? And that was over 20 years ago. Sure, now we have the web as a place to make maps but I think what characterizes the change in cartography isn't the technology...it's the people. More people make maps now. It's not just cartographers. It's everybody. It's fantastic. Let's not change cartography because, frankly, I don't believe it needs changing. Let's evolve it...together. What seems to be changing faster than anything is the number of people who seem intent on redefining it for little or no reason.

"the dogma of cartography is certain to be overturned by new discoveries"
I hope not. I hope that it's challenged and it evolves as it has done for centuries but why is everyone so hell-bent on revolution? Yes, people can explore cartography but it's not because they are doing so "outside the bounds of comfort for traditional cartography", It's because they are either unaware or not bothered to engage with it before they make their map. Of course new ways of seeing, talking about and doing cartography will come about because people have a natural desire to experiment. That's not the preserve of people new to map-making either. If I made every map the same I'd be bored to tears but if I come up with a new way of seeing a theme or how I wrestle with symbology or whatever I see it as adding to the mix...not as a way to overthrow cartography altogether. There's probably not a week goes by when I don't see something a little bit new...but rarely something that makes me reconsider the very nature of cartography itself. So why do some wish to set out to seek a way of destroying cartography with the implicit belief that new has to be better?

"welcome on board the journey for the new world of cartography, your old world criticism has missed the boat"
Probably, because no-one likes criticism and I'm acutely aware that everyone hates a critic...particularly one with opinions. Worse, one with opinions based on some understanding of what they're talking about. I'll likely get heat for this blog too and be painted as just that grumpy guy who thinks all new cartography should be immediately burned at the stake. The truth couldn't be more different. I embrace new stuff but it doesn't mean everything is awesome right? It's getting harder and harder to even suggest that something doesn't work and that's a problem generally and not specific to cartography or map critique.  Most people don't actually understand the role of critique anyway. They seem totally unable to separate a critique of their map from some perceived personal attack or unwarranted and unsupported criticism.  If I wanted to have a pop at someone I'd probably do it Jeremy Clarkson style (I never have by the way...). If I have something to say about your map I'm talking about your map and not you.  I may do it in a way that you don't care for but it's about the map, not the person and by the way, I enjoy people commenting on my maps because it makes them better.  Making a playful map shouldn't absolve it from critique anyway and the intent is not to provide critique as a way to reinforce established values. It's to provide a critical eye on what the author claims or what the technique claims...or more likely what the author claims about the technique. Does it hold up for instance? Yes, they often capture attention (because they shout very loudly) but dig a little deeper and they often hold little more than fleeting fascination. If critique is perceived as in any way negative then it's all too often explained away as a result of the guy offering the critique as being stuck in the past. Really? There's a chilling arrogance by far too many who seem unashamedly unwilling to learn anything from people who have been there and done it (I can see eyes rolling at the mere mention of that) or that critique is a valuable way of debating claims and techniques. But it's a sad state and it's spreading beyond the map and into map education. Even this week I was left totally bemused that someone (who I won't name) was openly proclaiming they had a eureka moment about something you'd likely learn in any high school geography class. And this person is paid by a mapping company to teach about geo and making maps. They self-proclaim they want to help people learn but frankly the evidence suggests they need to do some serious learning first. It's frightening. They are literally telling the world across social media that they know nothing about the very thing they profess to know everything about. And worse...there's an awful lot of people who gravitate to this type of person and mindset. Our whole basis for education about mapping and cartography is being challenged because the hacker mindset is now being extended beyond simply making maps to decrying any sort of formal education in geography, let alone any of the related mapping sciences. Is this how we want people to learn about mapping? I sincerely hope it's just a blip and sense will prevail because currently the world of new mapmakers is learning very little from other new mapmakers who know very little....and the more the new order creates this self-fulfilling agenda against a perceived 'old cartography' the less people will ever know or learn. Take a class. Take a MOOC. Attend workshops delivered by mapping societies and organisations. Search out any number of educational institutions who can point you in the right direction. DM or email me if you want any pointers from me.

"I think the Twitter maps are spot-on and achieve their objective better than you can imagine"
Twitter maps...nope,  I've made them myself. I've researched and published on their design and so on and I've used an awful lot of imagination but lots of flashing lights don't make a map that tells me anything. It's not the mapping that's necessarily the problem, it's the data and it's so full of holes that even if you put 35 million tweets on a map it doesn't cover up for the woeful bias, uncertainty and inability to make any sense of them. Technologically putting them on a map is a feat of engineering that is true but as a useful dataset or something you can visually make any sense of they fall short. And what's the objective anyway? I only ever see vacuous, unsubstantiated claims about what this or that map reveals. They don't. They really don't. Clarifying their real objective would be a good start. Finding a better use for animated flashing maps would also be useful. Making maps of millions of pieces of twitter drivel flashy simply gives me cognitive overload and short-term inattentional blindness and hinders change detection. Adding multiple colours for no apparent reason makes things even worse. Part of the art and science of cartography is taking lots of bits of information and wrangling them in a way that reveals something useful. Using a map as a canvas for a visual data dump doesn't work. It never has. Data art yes...a map. Not yet. And should such maps be immune from critique on the grounds that they are allegedly new and challenge cartography? I'd suggest these are the very maps that require critique to establish their real value.

"this is all a bit too handwavy for your quantified mapping practices"
Pitching some of us as quantifiers of mapping practice and others as do-ers; and marking the former out as old-fashioned and the latter as embodying the future is quite absurd. In that taxonomy I'm firmly labelled as one of those old-school quantifiers who prefers dogma. But then only yesterday I finished up a map that fits squarely within the mantra of exploratory playfulness and which challenged my own ideas. It was made way outside what you might call standard cartographic principles but it was made with a very clear understanding of the extent to which I could bend the rules. I worked with them, not against them...and I waved my hands a hell of a lot. You can't have it both ways. Yes, some of us have a professional history in the discipline that seems to mark us out as archaic buffoons from yesteryear and yes, many new map-makers don't have that history. I don't have a problem with that because the sand box is big enough for all of us...so why the hell is there such a pressing need to want to be different and so distinct from anything that ever went before? I'll continue waving my hands like I just don't care. Every now and again it'd be lovely to read that some new mapmaker made a new map and said you know what, I saw this technique on an old map, read about it and built off it.

"I'm ready to learn"
Yes. So am I. I learn every day. I'd like to see many new map-makers do a bit of learning too. Learn that they're perhaps not as new as they think they are and that so much of what they say makes them look, well, rather immature to say the least. Perhaps learn a little humility too. I don't care who you are but if you're in your early twenties you cannot know everything. I'm double that in years and I don't know half of what I'd like to know. There's scope to learn every day and if anything, life as an academic taught me one very important thing...it's not necessarily about knowing everything; it's about knowing what questions to ask, when to ask them and of whom to ask them.

"Get ready to fall in love with mapping all over again"
Nope. I'm already in love with mapping. Have been for more than 40 years. I've seen a lot of change and new stuff always interests and fascinates me. I've no need for people new to mapping to portray this point in the history of cartography as so fundamentally new that we all need to re-boot. If it serves to justify how you like to be seen, as different, fresh and avant-garde then go ahead. I've seen more people than I care to remember herald the new cartography and ultimately it just adds to the soup. Of course there's new stuff...there always will be in a fast-paced technologically underpinned area such as cartography. I get as excited as the next person with the ability to create incredible looking work and thinking up ways of harnessing new technology for making maps. There's some incredible stuff going on but there was last year too...and the year before that...and ten years before that...and in the early 1900s etc. Carry on being in love...don't discard your previous lover because you think you've found a shiny new one.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...lines in the sand are unhelpful. Some of us are professional cartographers, some of us are amateur map-makers. We're different but we don't have to be divided by rhetoric. Some of us have a formal cartographic education, others have backgrounds in biology, computer science and journalism. For many, the emergence of tools they've gravitated towards have allowed them to make maps they want to make. Some are good. Some are crap. That's life. Some people who purport to be cartographers also make pretty shitty maps. I have made some shitty maps too.  Most of my favourite maps of all time were made by non-cartographers. And before you start mocking old-school technologies you know there would likely never be any new technologies without their existence. Plenty of people use them perfectly well so let's not start fighting because you think I use a crayon and you use a Macbook Air.

I disagree with much of what Andrew said in his blog and I hope he appreciates my right of reply and takes it in the spirit of conversation. As for his maps...shit they're good and he's a talented map-maker. We need more of his sort. Some people like my work too...and it's conceivable the same people might like both our work. Don't shout that too loud though eh?

Update: I'd recommend this excellent blog by Taylor Shelton who picked up the threads in this and Andrew's blog. He makes some very reasonable and pertinent comments about the value and purpose of critique. He also suggests it's not really about getting people to love maps but, rather, that we should get people to take maps more seriously. I agree. I also feel that this idea of rejecting established cartography in favour of playful exploration is really just an excuse for not applying thought or intent to encode, reveal and communicate meaning. James Cheshire also offered some thoughts on his blog and I particularly like his last comment that "[cartography] doesn't need to take the short term view and compromise its standards to remain relevant"