Cartography
Resources including tutorials on cartographic design and mapping techniques. Learn about how to make a cartogram, different ways to represent features on a map, and basics of cartography.
World’s Smallest Map?
With a scale of 1 trillonth, a map of the world was etched on to a corner of an optical silicon chip by the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University-IMEC. Using CMOS fabrication tools, IMEC has reduced the 40-thousand-kilometer circumference at the equator down to 40 micrometer, about half the width of a human hair. The [...]
Zoomable Paper Map
Called map2, the uniqueness about this map of London is the patented folding technique that allows the viewer to either view a large scale map or to fold out sections to see the zoomed in area. The folding and unfolding reminds me of origami in the demonstration video so I hope the real world use of this map is [...]
A Year of Movement
Andy Woodruff of the Cartogrammar blog spent 2009 tracking his movements. Woodruff mapped out his movements on a daily basis and categorized them by type of transport: foot, car, bike, train, and bus. The mapping was restricted to just the Cambridge, Massachusetts area so out-of-town trips are not recorded. Woodruff relied on memory and drafted [...]
Thematic Mapping at the US County Level with Free Tools
The FlowingData site has a post with instructions from Nathan Yau on how to create “a simple map without all the GIS stuff“ of the United States at the county level using free tools. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on unemployment rates, Yau provides the steps necessary to use a SVG map showing [...]
First Thematic Maps
Zachary Forest Johnson provides an overview on Indiemaps.com on the first published instances of each of the six most commonly used thematic mapping techniques: choropleth, proportional symbol, dot density, flow, isarithmic, and cartogram. Each technique’s first mapping instance is described along with a scanned sample of the map. In conclusion, Johnson writes: Four of the [...]