Things We Put On Maps

The Four Key Elements

• Scales
• Points
• Lines
• Areas

Scales (w/Rules of Thumb)

From Krygier and Wood (2016)

This comes up immediately, since we’ll be using Natural Earth data more and more (via the rnaturalearth library) to obtain country POLYGONs

The Three Key Elements

From Monmonier (2018)

Thought Experiment: Zooming In and Out

• What happens to points, lines, and areas?

What Can Happen to Points?

From Monmonier (2018)

What Can Happen to Lines?

From Monmonier (2018)

What Can Happen to Lines?

Selection

In any map, most features from the human or natural environment are eliminated! (Krygier and Wood 2016)

Simplification

Within the features that do remain, eliminate details that are unnecessary with respect to audience/context (Krygier and Wood 2016)

What Can Happen to Areas?

From Monmonier (2018)

Areal Dimension Change

From Krygier and Wood (2016)

What Is Gained?

From Monmonier (2018)

What Is Lost?

From Monmonier (2018)

Who Is Affected?

From Monmonier (2018)

References

Krygier, John, and Denis Wood. 2016. Making Maps, Third Edition: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS. Guilford Publications.

Monmonier, Mark. 2018. How to Lie with Maps. University of Chicago Press.