Cartography article on secretplans.org Options

[MWFrost]

Hi, folks. I just registered so as to drop a reply into this thread. At the risk of self-shilling, I've added a cartography article to my site (mentioned below) that I'd be interested in hearing comments on.

Best Regards,
Matt Frost

To the moderator: please delete this post if it is inappropriate.

[Dennis McClendon]

Good article, Matt, and welcome.

Last year's NACIS conference included a presentation about trying to reproduce some historical cartographic techniques in GIS.

Earlier this year I had a client who wanted an early 20th century look for some city plans. Even with all the power of illustration and photo manipulation software, I wasn't really satisfied with the results. The lines were too clean and crisp; the type too perfectly spaced and aligned.

[Hans van der Maa...]

Not inappropriate at all, a very nice article indeed. I just split the discussion off into a new thread.

[Martin Gamache]

Last year's NACIS conference included a presentation about trying to reproduce some historical cartographic techniques in GIS. 

I believe there is one this year as well.

[Hans van der Maa...]

There is one mentioned in the agenda, again by the Esri people. Last year's session was very interesting, I hope they've managed to improve on it.

[Martin Gamache]

I think a Cartotalker (DaveB) is involved....

[DaveB]

There is one mentioned in the agenda, again by the Esri people. Last year's session was very interesting, I hope they've managed to improve on it.

Thanks, I hope we have, too

Yep, Martin, I am one of the people involved in the session.

I think we have been able to make progress, but I agree with Dennis that it's still too "regular". I think introducing some irregularity is one of the keys to really making a map look old and non-digital. But I also think there are also some techniques, such as the ones Matt describes in his article that can be adapted for good effect in the digital world.

Good article, Matt!

Maybe I should post an example of something I have been working on, for critique and ideas?

[Hans van der Maa...]

Maybe I should post an example of something I have been working on, for critique and ideas?

Please do.

[pghardy]

There is one mentioned in the agenda, again by the Esri people. Last year's session was very interesting, I hope they've managed to improve on it.

As well as the paper on "Antique Maps in ArcGIS" (which should certainly be interesting), there is another ESRI paper at this NACIS on "Database-driven Smart Symbology", which covers new facilities coming in ArcGIS 9.2. These facilities do make possible anew, some cartographic styles which have been hard to do with GIS in the past.

There was a recent paper on this given at the Auto-Carto conference titled "Cartography: from Drawing to Database (Technology Facilitates Traditional Styles)", for which I was a co-author. This was also given in extended form at the Geotec 2006 conference, and the paper is available on my web site - see http://www.hardy.34sp.com/papers/2006_geotec_punt_et_al.pdf. It uses an imaginary historical map to provide a set of case studies for cartographic improvement.

[DaveB]

Maybe I should post an example of something I have been working on, for critique and ideas?

Please do.

OK, I've posted an antique-style map of the Caribbean in the gallery. Let me know what you all think.

[Matthew Hampton]

Nice article Matt,

I like your articulation about the inherent differences between creating a map heads-up on screen vs. engraving a hunk a of copper.

Just as people used to say that digital camera's would never reach the resolution of film, I think we will create (like you did) digital congruencies to historic methods. My favorite is Sketch-Up's "jitter" whereby lines are rendered as hand drawn lines. I wonder if someone will be creative enough at Adobe (or ESRI) to give us that option.

[Martin Gamache]

I think that images created digitally can have a greater range of visible resolution and viewable scales on-screen than on paper which is the advantage of looking at digital images on screen. The problem is crossing over from one to another. I often find I've created images that are too detailed for the paper scale and the details I can see on screen and spend a long time getting just right, don't even show up in the print version.