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An interesting instance of applied typography: maps
Posted by eliason in
6 Jan 2012 — 7:34am
6 Jan 2012 — 7:34am
Slate has an article about an award-winning US map that gets into the craft of hand-placed labels in cartography. It's framed as perhaps the last great effort of individual craft in a world now dominated by computer algorithms corrected by cheap outsourced labor.
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6 Jan 2012 — 8:25am
I saw it, it's really beautiful, and sadly mapmaking is not where it once was. But the ugliness of today's maps is nothing new, as Dutch map-fanatic and designer Joost Grootens says: "Maps became ugly with the coming of CMYK printing, which muddled the clarity and atmosphere of a map" (beforehand they were often printed using up to 12 spot colors). The vibrancy and crispness of old maps is amazing compared to modern renderings.
I'll have a peek if I can get one shipped over!
Next to that, I'll post this great lithographed map by the English art collective Dorothy:
http://www.wearedorothy.com/art/song-map-unlimited-edition
6 Jan 2012 — 11:18am
I have always been attracted by fine map making. Fortunately, the art of it is not dead at all. In Saxony there is Dr.-Ing. Rolf Böhm who draws regional area maps entirely by hand (!) and distributes them. These maps outlevel any competing product in terms of precision and information density while retaining a breathtaking degree of visual balance. I can only recommend to look at his production.
6 Jan 2012 — 1:37pm
Don't forget Zapf started out drawing maps, didn't he?
6 Jan 2012 — 9:09pm
Doing a search on how maps are printed, I couldn't find too much, except information about wax engraving. That technique allowed maps to be drawn as a positive, rather than a negative, image; it was invented by Rand McNally in 1872, and was only displaced by photolithography around 1930.
But that doesn't really relate to the quality factors noted here, such as hand placement of lettering and the number of colors used in the printing process.
7 Jan 2012 — 12:23pm
I haven’t seen the Imus map in the paper, but it doesn’t fare too well in the Slate article, vis-a-vis the National Geographic map.
The type looks cluttered, because the designer has been reluctant to vary its alignment by “mapping” it to curved paths, or rotating away from the horizontal. Also contributing to the clutter is a lack of variety of type styles, and the rather generic sans typeface used, which lacks distinction, in more ways than one.
Just because something is labored over in a traditional manner doesn’t make it a good design.
8 Jan 2012 — 9:20am
Anyone knows if the software package used allows curved paths?
8 Jan 2012 — 9:58am
I once imagined a Multiple-Master axis that would vary the "keystone"
(to borrow a term from projectors) of the letterforms (in a sensitive
way, not just geometrically) and the point on the MM axis would be
chosen by the illustration software based on the curvature of the text
path at that point. The text would look perfect. And no human could
replicate that.
hhp
8 Jan 2012 — 1:32pm
I wonder what Edward Tufte thinks of the Imus map. I myself think that, no matter the lack of spline paths, the typography is easier to navigate than the National Geo map.
10 Jan 2012 — 12:08pm
I liked the Imus map.
I should note that there is one major difference between it and the Nat'l Geo map that shows how it just has different goals. The Nat'l Geo map has at least twice as many cities marked on it, maybe more. Having so many places marked seems to me a likely reason why they couldn't show other details that the Imus map does, and need a plain background....
That being said, there are some things that just seem better done on the Imus map. I like his approach to marking state borders for example, even if it is rather non-traditional.