Customer Reviews

GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a college professor teaching GIS, I found this book to be extremely useful for students who have no previous map making or design skills. I especially like the "Best Practices" sections that help students learn from real world applications. The book also includes a nice variety of examples, from basic to advanced maps.

This is an easy to read, well written book that is very useful for new and veteran GIS users.

The introduction contains a great summary of the purpose of this book. "Many of us enter the GIS profession without so much as one hour of design instruction in our formal educations. This book seeks to fill that void by providing a reference that can be thumbed through time and again as your create your maps."

I have been working in the civil engineering consulting world for the last 11 years. I have certainly created a lot of maps in that time frame, and Gretchen is correct in that I don't have any training in design. I found this book to be a very practical and easy to read guide for understanding the elements of good map design.

The book is not software specific, and not even GIS specific. If you make maps of any type in your line of work this will be a helpful resource to get you off on the right foot, and something to refer back to for guidance on how to create a well designed, better communicating, map.

"The good cartographer is both a scientist and an artist. He must have a through knowledge of his subject and model, the Earth...He must have the ability to generalize intelligently and to make a right selection of the features to show. These are represented by means of lines or colors; and the effective use of lines or colors requires more than knowledge of the subject - it requires artistic judgement." Erwin Josephus Raisz

This book is the best book yet for designing cartographically accurate and intelligible maps as a GIS user. I have been a cartography educator at the University of Minnesota and UW-River Falls. Most books dwell on how to use ArcGIS. This one doesn't. This one uses layperson English to explain to people already familiar with GIS software of any type how to design maps that look good. Exactly what is needed in this day and age of GIS users making unintelligible and counter-productive maps! The best book I have read in years for students. I highly recommend it for practicing GIS users who know they are making crappy maps, as well as for instructors in smaller academic programs that are expanding their GIS offerings at the expense of courses in cartographic design.

I previously somehow received a verion of this book that was in black and white. For a book discussing design and color theory that is a bit of a stretch of imagination. Promptly though, Gretchen got in touch with me and tried to remnedy this problem as soon as possible. When in the end, things still proceeded slowly she graciously sent me a copy of the book via an express second day air service (to Europe!)

The book packs lots of good advice for the cartographer and individual in general who is working in the field of map design. Today there is a wealth of sources with which anybody who has access to GIS software can create very interestings maps. However designing well designed and communicative maps has, apart from general design and color principles, also some very specific knowledge that is particular to map design. Petersons book discusses these topics effectively and yes, the book is generously illustrated with lots of color illustrations.

The physical compact format makes it an ideal and compact book to keep with you and look things up when in doubt on a particular cartographic design problem. It would have been nice to see a small section on genrally used map projections and when the use of one projection might be better than another. Maybe something for a next edition.

Overall a nice and compact book on the topic creating communicative maps.

After reading Gretchen's book, just as she explained in her forward, I wished I had had this book in front of me 8 years ago. It's simple steps and honest, frank tone give the reader just the right amount of guidance to create effective, clear, good-looking maps. Personally, I liked Gretchen's approach to looking for inspiration in the everyday - finding color, style and layout inspiration through nontraditional cartographic arenas. The most useful aspect of her book, though, is the simple and clear instructions in which she lays out the steps and provides useful tools to creating a map that is powerful, concise and easy to understand.

Whether you are deep into your GIS career or a day-one graduate, I think there is quite a lot to be learned from "GIS Cartography".

Many people think that making a map is easy - just press a few buttons and it is done.
This book does an excellent job in explaining many of the concepts and principles involved in map design. The book contains a lot of information on what the cartographer must think about when creating a map; core elements include layout design, fonts, colors, features, and media involved in presenting the map. The overriding message is that a good map takes a lot of work and effort.
I highly recommend this book for anyone making maps- regardless whether they are novices or experienced cartographers and for anyone who is asking someone to make a map for them. I have been making maps for over 20 years; this book is a wonderful addition to my current collection of books on cartography.

The first thing that stood out to me was the openness and personable presentation of the author in the introduction. As I read through this book I did not see it as a textbook, but I saw it as if I was sitting across the table from Gretchen discussing keys to GIS cartography. She presents each area in a detailed manor as one speaking from experience.

I liked how the book did not focus on a single software package, but provides ideas that could be applied across the board. The examples and topics are presented in a more up to date application. This allows for the incorporation of new media like PowerPoint slides and web maps. Although this book was written with the early career professional in mind, it has a lot of good stuff for everyone no matter the career level.

A few areas that really stood out to me included the challenge of learning to be creative with map design. Observing art and other non map designs help stimulate the creative juices. There is also an excellent detailed layout design checklist. Each element is discussed extensively throughout the chapter. Another helpful area was map fonts. Learning when to use certain fonts, understanding map viewing distance and its correlation to the font size, and understanding the importance of text direction are some of the topics discussed in the font chapter.

I highly recommend this book. It is a great reference book for the beginning cartographer to the seasoned professional. I keep it within arms reach on my desk.

I found this book to be very useful and has assisted me in structuring my map designs. As such the advice given is clear and insightful, however I thought the author could have given the same information in half the space. The down-to-earth / folksy writing style is a little distracting. I could live with that but I do not understand why a book covering colour theory would be printed in black and white. The colour maps are all in grey tones and the recommended colour swatches and are also presented as shades of grey (although the RGB codes are helpfully provided as an annex).

É um livro interessante para aqueles que buscam ampliar a leitura sobre cartografia temática. Ainda mais com os software Arcgis, Mapinfo entre outros, o layout dos mapas deixaram de ser um exercício e as vezes o operador apenas usa o mapa default, que é uma pena.
Para os aqueles que estão pensando em estudar mais um pouco, é uma boa leitura.
O conteúdo é bem didático, em cada capítulo tem uma boa discussão sobre o tema abordado e com exemplos a serem aplicados, apesar de estar inglês pode ser empregado nas condições brasileiras, por exemplo.

I am a co-author of the new URISA 'Cartography and Map Design' one-day workshop. As someone who was trained as a cartographer many years ago, I wanted to see what current recommendations were for good map design. Gretchen Peterson's book provides an excellent framework for understanding the map design process and implementing best practices in map production. This book is well organized, beginning with a process overview of map design, then progressing to very specific 'best-practices' recommendations. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has not been trained as a cartographer but who needs to develop effective maps as part of their job responsibilities.