Original subtitles

There are a number of controls on Map Design.

And what do we mean by controls?

These are things that everyone has to deal with,

that you don't have any control over.

Things that you have to contend with no matter what the map is,

or who you're making it for, or where that map may be located.

So, the controls on map design are purpose, reality, available data,

scale, audience, conditions of use, and technical limits.

And we'll talk about these in more or less details.

Some of them are pretty straightforward and may only take one or

two minutes to talk about.

Some of them are a little more complicated and require a much longer discussion.

But I want you to be aware and cognizant of all of these and

think about them when you're making your map,

things that you need to contend with as we go along, as you're making your maps.

The purpose of a map is quite simply what that map will be used for.

It determines what will be included, whether it's a general reference map or

a thematic map, and I'll talk about that more as we go along.

And the purpose of it will determine how that map will look.

So, if you're making a map for tourists at an amusement park or shoppers at a mall.

Those maps are going to be very different in the way the design questions and

answers that you make or

the decisions you make will be different depending on what that map is for.

If it's a scientific map that's going in a technical report,

it's going to have a very different style, a look, feel to it than it would for

something for more general audience.

All of these things related to the purpose of the map.

So here's an example of a reference map.

This is from a website at www.algonquinmap.com.

So this is a map of Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario.

And if we zoom in here, I just love this map.

You can use it as a web page, you can download as a PDF,

you can get a printed version of this map.

And it shows an enormous amount of information packed into

a very small space.

But that's what a reference map is for,

everything should be of similar importance, they should be represented

visually by keeping the graphics as simple as possible in the same visually plain.

In another words what that means is, that nothing jumps out too much,

that whatever it is that you want to focus on, you can.

If we wanted just focus on the water we can, so

we have this light blue that represents a lake.

And we can see that the labeling for this if we want, but it's not too prominent.

We do have sort of a bit of hierarchy or ordering to this.

So some things stand out a little bit more, like in black,

a little more contrast.

We have a portage store there.

But the main thing here is that, so this is if you haven't guessed already,

is a map for people that are camping, hiking, canoeing in Algonquin Park.

And the guy that created it is actually a former student of mine.

He took one of my courses many years ago and

I certainly don't take a lot of the credit for the talent that this guy has.

Jeff McBuchery was the guy that started it, but

this was really a labor of love for him.

He loved going to that park and he loved collecting his own data and

turning it into this map and he wanted to share it with others.

And he's done a really nice job of packing a lot of information in so

that there's sort of multiple themes here.

You've got water, canoe routes, camp sites, place names,

all kinds of things in here, historical information about former towns,

that's all packed into this reference map.

And it's similar if you have, say, a driving map or

a topographic map if you've used those before.

So the purpose of this map is really multipurpose.

You are giving it to a lot of people and saying,

I'm not sure what you're going to use it for.

Maybe you need to find a campground, maybe you are going canoeing,

maybe it's some other thing, you're driving through the area.

So, all of that information is on there, all of those themes are there,

but it's multipurpose.

It's kind of like thinking of it like an encyclopedia of information.

When you have an encyclopedia, if you think of the old printed versions of

those, these bound volumes, they were created because there's a lot of

information that people may want to access to.

And it's created because they're not sure what you're going to want it for, so

here's a whole bunch of information in case you need it.

That's what a reference map is for.

And that relates to the purpose as a control on map design.

Here's another reference map.

This is created by natural resources Canada as a government agency which is

a topographic map that's part of a larger series for the entire country of Canada,

and they've done the same thing here.

As a reference map they've packed in an enormous amount of information

on things like buildings, and roads, and islands, and water bodies, and parks.

They even have contour lines in here.

There's shading to represent residential areas.

You get the idea.

Again, there's a lot of information on here, and

it's put in a way that's efficient and yet elegant.

And you may take these for granted.

It's easy to just sort of look at it and say, well,

I just need to know where I'm going or whatever.

But it took an enormous amount of time to develop the symbology for this and

the placement of all of these things, it would have been hours,

hundreds of hours probably, for these maps to put these together.

So I do appreciate a really good reference map.

A different purpose for

a map is a thematic map, and with a thematic map, there's one theme to it.

So if you think of an encyclopedia as being a collection of a whole

bunch of facts, a thematic map is more like a turn paper,

that your write on a particular subject.

So a thematic map has one subject or theme, it's often the answer to a specific

question, so here it's relating to mean annual temperatures in Canada.

And we have this color scheme here, from cool colors to warm colors, and what do

you know [LAUGH] it's cool in the north and then it gets warmer as you go south.

And with a map like this it's not a reference map,

it's not meant to be used for any other purpose than to understand the pattern of

this one variable which is mean annual temperature.

And this has been done in a way that it's easy to see, the pattern that

there is a gradation from one area to another that it's easy to interpret.

And that it's cold colors like blue are associated with cold and

warm colors are associated with warm.

And since this is temperature, hey, that seems like a good color scheme to use.

So, this is a thematic map, so a very different purpose.

And often the maps that we're going to make using a GIS are more thematic maps.

Reference maps are a little less common, not to say you couldn't make one, but

they're less common.

Typically, what we're doing is trying to answer a research question or

an analysis question of some kind.

We want to know the answer to something, and that map is showing us that answer.

So where are all the people that shop at a particular grocery store, or

whatever it happens to be.

And so the map that you create to answer that question will be a thematic map, so

that's a different purpose than a reference map.

And the design decisions that are made will be different for

that map than they would be for a reference map.

The funny thing is there's not necessarily a hard and

fast rule about what's a reference map versus thematic map.

Sometimes there's a blurring of the lines between the two.

But this map here, this is a base map from RGS Online,

similar to like a Google Maps kind of thing.

It looks like a reference map when you first look at it.

And that's really what it is, is there's information on roads and neighborhoods,

that kind of thing.

But what if I do this?

Now, I've added the locations of bike stores, bike shops in Toronto.

Now, it's a thematic map.

In other words, I'm saying to somebody if I was to make this map and

distribute it to say if you want to know where bike shops are in Toronto,

here's a map that answers that question.

So, yes and of course it still has the elements of a reference map.

And those are often important in a thematic map is you want to provide enough

geographic context so someone knows where those are.

If all you had were the symbols of the bike shops and nothing else,

could be useless.

You have to have something that tells people,

well where is this shop in relation to the road network or downtown, or the lake or

whatever it is that they might think is useful for them to

refer to as some kind of background information related to that theme.

Here's the same bike shop data using a different base map.

This is another base map in RGS Online.

That is purposely created so that it is a good backdrop for a thematic map.

So here they've kind of I think of it as like washing out the colors.

They've made it this really light gray.

There's not a lot of background information on there, and

that's intentional because the idea is for

the base map to sort of fade into the background.

And the subject of your map, the theme should be more in the foreground or

should be more obvious to people.

And so the same data, less reference information than the previous version.

And I think in the end it actually makes it a better thematic map,

because people can still see relatively where those things are in the city.

But the reference data is not as distracting.

There are lots of different base maps available.

The one that I'm using here is called light grey canvas.

The one I was using previously was topographic.

So depending on what you're using the map for you might pick one of the others,

some other ones.

But the light gray canvas is one that you might start with as it's

a really good base map to be able to put thematic map data over.

Here's a dark version of that gray map,

I think it actually well I have kind of two minds here.

One is that I think that the contrast is good since the symbols are yellow and

the background is this really dark gray, the symbols become really obvious.

There's a good pop to them, you're really seeing where they are but

I think it's a little too dramatic and it kind of looks like something out of a,

I don't know, a spy movie or something.

If that's the look you're going for, great.

My personal taste is maybe it's a little too dark, but it could work.