II.

The Nature of Cartography

Cartography—or map-making—is both a set of skills and a subject for academic study. The making of maps traditionally requires:

• The ability to find and select data from many sources—both analogue and digital—on different aspects of the environment and society, then to synthesize the results into a single, consistent combination of the map subject features.
• Design skills to create a final map which will correctly portray the intended “message” to users who vary greatly in their map-reading skills.
• Computer competence and graphic design skills to select the relevant information and data for the intended map; to simplify often-complex patterns into simple ones; and to communicate the subject using symbols, lines, and colours to create a map that is legible and free from “clutter”.

Maps appear in many forms and media from antique collector’s prints, through modern digital topographic maps, navigation charts, and reference atlases, to images created “on demand” on the World Wide Web. They are historical and sociological documents. In Britain, for instance, Ordnance Survey first produced maps from the beginning of the 19th century; these maps are a vital record of the landscape up to the present day, showing long-forgotten industrial works and former railways. A more sinister example is the use of misleading maps as propaganda in Nazi Germany to demonstrate the “threat” to Germans who were being “outnumbered and encircled” by Eastern Europeans. In current times mapping techniques extend beyond the simple recording of information to applications in many scientific, medical, and government situations to assist planning, management, and decision-making. For this reason, maps and their creators are the subject of much academic study, for they illuminate history and provide models for future improvements.

There is no one “correct” way to make a map. The way it is done depends on the facilities available to the cartographer, the purpose of the map, and his or her knowledge base. There are, however, many good “rules of thumb” which can guide the new map-maker.