Book 41 - Simon Garfield "On The Map"
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jazzy_daveSimon Garfield "On The Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does" (Profile Books)
A guided tour of specific maps through the ages, with diversions featuring cartographers and anecdotes. Without providing a canonical history or careful analysis of either cartography or even any specific concern within it, Garfield's short chapters and conversational style introduce many intriguing ideas and historical trends.
Afterward, it occurred to me there was not as much on design apart from the special difficulties of constructing a globe, and generally the problems of various projections. I realize now I'd like to know more about iconography, such as the various ways mountains have been depicted on maps: idiosyncracies of them, shading versus stylized symbols versus satellite imagery versus isobars, why some cartographers might prefer one option over others, the relative advantages or implications of using one over another (do placenames work better with some? does the human eye exaggerate the scale of a range when using others?). And so forth, for the various aspects of cartographic design. One of Garfield's more celebrated sidebars deals with Beck's tube map, and which most directly addresses these concerns but only for this one situation. (Garfield uses an adaptation of Beck's design for the endpapers.) He also mentions the preference for filling in spaces on a map, whether with notations or by stretching letters for placenames.
An unintended consequence of early cartography relying upon report rather than direct observation or empirical data: ghost features in maps, the most notorious perhaps the Mountains of Kong, stretching the length of West Africa, but which actually were never there. People who outright lied/invented places, a prime offender the American Captain Benjamin Worrell.
The uses of maps beyond orientation, in particular as a graphical representation of data a la Tufte: the Cholera Map, the Mappa Mundi, maps of imaginary places such as in fantasy literature or video games.
"Here Be Dragons" has not been confirmed in use on an actual map to designate Terra Incognito. Rather, it is used in literature and colloquially as though it had been (earliest sighting: Dorothy Sayers's 1928 story, "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head"). On the other hand, pictures of dragons appear aplenty, with various meanings.
Recommended for those who like maps, travel, and history.
A guided tour of specific maps through the ages, with diversions featuring cartographers and anecdotes. Without providing a canonical history or careful analysis of either cartography or even any specific concern within it, Garfield's short chapters and conversational style introduce many intriguing ideas and historical trends.
Afterward, it occurred to me there was not as much on design apart from the special difficulties of constructing a globe, and generally the problems of various projections. I realize now I'd like to know more about iconography, such as the various ways mountains have been depicted on maps: idiosyncracies of them, shading versus stylized symbols versus satellite imagery versus isobars, why some cartographers might prefer one option over others, the relative advantages or implications of using one over another (do placenames work better with some? does the human eye exaggerate the scale of a range when using others?). And so forth, for the various aspects of cartographic design. One of Garfield's more celebrated sidebars deals with Beck's tube map, and which most directly addresses these concerns but only for this one situation. (Garfield uses an adaptation of Beck's design for the endpapers.) He also mentions the preference for filling in spaces on a map, whether with notations or by stretching letters for placenames.
An unintended consequence of early cartography relying upon report rather than direct observation or empirical data: ghost features in maps, the most notorious perhaps the Mountains of Kong, stretching the length of West Africa, but which actually were never there. People who outright lied/invented places, a prime offender the American Captain Benjamin Worrell.
The uses of maps beyond orientation, in particular as a graphical representation of data a la Tufte: the Cholera Map, the Mappa Mundi, maps of imaginary places such as in fantasy literature or video games.
"Here Be Dragons" has not been confirmed in use on an actual map to designate Terra Incognito. Rather, it is used in literature and colloquially as though it had been (earliest sighting: Dorothy Sayers's 1928 story, "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head"). On the other hand, pictures of dragons appear aplenty, with various meanings.
Recommended for those who like maps, travel, and history.
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