Monday, October 10, 2011

My maps are now helping to define GIS


At least, the California Map Society is using two images of my maps to help them define the term GIS (URL: http://californiamapsociety.org/mapping/gis.php). I created these maps back when I worked for MTC, and submitted them to ESRI for use in their Map Gallery. Somebody found them at the California Map Society page, and emailed me with a question about how I made them... which is a refreshing reminder that cartography does matter, and once upon a time, I did a lot of it.

An interesting side note is that these maps represented for me the first result of my dabblings in "psychaedelic geography", or the use of non-traditional colors and methods to depict GIS data on maps. The purpose of psychaedelic geography was foremost to make maps that looked more interesting and less boring, which was intended to have consequential side effects of getting people to pay more attention to the data represented on the map. Looks like it worked!

In the three years since I came over to Calthorpe Associates, I have been doing a lot more work behind the scenes, that is, work involving databases, project coordination, public relations, client relations, spreadsheets... in short, everything but cartography. Maybe, thanks to this reminder and the changing demands of the project, I will start to do more cartography soon...