Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS [Paperback]

John Krygier PhD (Author), Denis Wood PhD (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1593852002 | ISBN-13: 978-1593852009 | Publication Date: August 17, 2005 | Edition: 1

A concise, down-to-earth guide to creating maps using GIS, this book is visually engaging, clear, and compelling--exactly how an effective map should be. Featuring over 300 maps and other figures, including instructive examples of both good and poor design choices, the book covers everything from locating and processing data to making decisions about layout, map symbols, color, and type. For students, professionals, and others who want to make better maps, this is an essential, uniquely helpful resource. The author's website (http://makingmaps.owu.edu) offers excerpts from each chapter, links to related sites, and a regularly updated blog on the topic of making maps.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This detailed guide to elementary mapping in the age of digital information, Internet resources, and geographic information systems is simple, clear, and comprehensive. The book's lucid style and dramatic, apposite, and often funny illustrations make it a novel and effective resource in a culture where the map is a ubiquitous presence. More than an instruction manual on making maps, it is also a guide to their critical reading and interpretation. Making Maps will be invaluable for users as well as creators of maps at the university level and beyond."--Denis Cosgrove, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

"Although it looks deceptively simple--like the textbook equivalent of a graphic novel--Making Maps condenses all the essential principles of map making and the geographic concepts behind them into a remarkably accessible, witty, engaging book. The text is crystal clear and irreverent, the hundreds of illustrations inspiring and memorable. Only Krygier and Wood, two of the most creative geographers on the planet, could come up with this breakthrough visualization of the art and science of making good maps. Novice and even experienced cartographers will find it an indispensable guide."--Anne Knowles, Department of Geography, Middlebury College

"A unique and timely book that provides much-needed guidance to GIS users making thematic maps. One strength of the book is that principles of map design are often best shown by visual example, and another is that the examples are not tied to any one GIS software package. Cartographically sound and very approachable, this book will help readers ensure that the maps they make are clear, legible and easy to understand."--Barbara P. Buttenfield, Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder

About the Author

John Krygier is a geographer with degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and The Pennsylvania State University. He has extensive experience with map design and production, and has taught mapping and GIS at Penn State, the University of Oregon, The Ohio State University, and the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He is past president of the North American Cartographic Information Society, and the editor of the journal Cartographic Perspectives. He teaches mapping, GIS, and geography at Ohio Wesleyan University, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Denis Wood curated the Smithsonian’s award-winning Power of Maps exhibition and wrote the bestselling The Power of Maps (Guilford). More recently he has published Seeing Through Maps (ODT) and Five Billion Years of Global Change: A History of the Land (Guilford). He is an independent scholar living in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: The Guilford Press; 1 edition (August 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593852002
• ISBN-13: 978-1593852009
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Cartography

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a real gem, May 18, 2006

By 

[e-mail] (SoCal, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS (Paperback)

This book should be required reading for anyone who is allowed to make maps with a GIS. It's actually a pretty quick read (3-4 hours for me) thanks to its concise and tightly organized text set in context of some very clean and simple graphics. There is even a healthy dash of humor (so welcome in technical writing), genuinely funny but always in service of the text.

Read this book to avoid the classic mistakes that all neophyte mapmakers commit.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Format makes this book a disappointment, December 13, 2007

By 

Roger A. Andre - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS (Paperback)

I was honestly disappointed with this book, so much so, that I returned it to the seller. Although the subject matter it contains is quite good, the layout and presentation leave a great deal to be desired, especially for a book that is focused on cartography and which costs over $40.

My 2 greatest irritations with it were the following: 1) There is virtually no color in the book, with the exception of a few color plates in the middle. 2) Although the book's dimensions are roughly 9" x 7", the material contained inside appears to have been formatted for a small paperback. On average, it appears each page contains more than 50% whitespace. It feels like you are looking at a reduced slide show presentation that was converted into a grayscale printout.

My advice to prospective buyers of this book is to buy a copy of Monmonier's classic, "How to Lie with Maps", and Cynthia Brewer's excellent, "Designing Better Maps - A Guide for GIS Users" instead. The cost will be about the same - for 2 books.

To the authors of this book I say, "Nice try, but c'mon, you can do better than this. You're cartographers for Pete's sake!"

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Keep Looking, February 27, 2010

By 

Prill Lake (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS (Paperback)

I bought this based on the reviews here at Amazon. This book presents some good ideas, most of which are intuitive, and in totality makes for a decent desk reference for the cartographer. However, as someone else has pointed out, the formatting of the information on the page is unimpressive and I would add, confounding and hard to read.

Most of the example maps in this book are black & white, and somewhat randomly placed in a sea of white space. After reading I'm still wondering what the author is trying to say with his stylistic choices. In either case it certainly weakens Krygier's point of view on 'a Visual Guide to map Design' imo. 'General mapping ideas presented in a pseudo-minimalist fashion' would make for a better title. Props for including a nude though.

-> Buy one of Brewer's books, you won't be disappointed.