Yesterday I was given a quick project for human geography Professor Kris Olds in the geography department. I have had professor Olds in a couple classes throughout Madison and really enjoy his connection between the global world and the socio-economic aspects of culture and community. He came to the lab in need of a simple map that showed membership addition of the Bologna Process that began in 1999. Bear with me, since most of my knowledge of this comes from Wikipedia (but this is a blog, so you can't complain). Basically, the Bologna process is the creation of the European Higher Education Area, which establishes a consistent and compatible education standards program throughout Europe and surrounding countries. This enables the fluid movement of students throughout Europe's higher education universities.
Members of the Bologna Process
I don't have much to say about the map, since it hopefully speaks for itself along with my quite abbreviated explanation. The map is a choropleth with ordinal (qualitative but orderable) data. The color scheme had to be compatible with some of Olds' other maps the lab has made, so my choices were somewhat limited, but for relative purposes not much at all. I chose a multi-hue scheme from an online color schemer, Color Brewer that was developed partially by my past introduction to Cartography professor, Mark Harrower. This program has been very useful in my search for appropriate color schemes on for choropleth maps that require multi hues and saturations of color. It creates color schemes depending on tons of variables including, number of classes, color scheme (CMYK, RGB or HEX), printer-friendly, colorblind-friendly, multi-hue, single-huge, etc. Other programs created by the same people include a tool, Type Brewer, for help in selecting typography.
All in all, I really like this map since it reminds me of how enjoyable simplicity can be. It took me the afternoon to create it and only some edits this morning to finish it. The map doesn't need to be fancy with tons of flare, it can simply just show a simple trend. I used as little labeling as possible with a very simplified light Gill Sans typeface.
Though I knew it, I hadn't really realized why I enjoy maps and map making so much. I just assumed I had found a hobby that for some odd reason had a well established professional world. But after making this map and many others I understand myself and why these two-dimensional fabrications completely fascinate me. I simply enjoy learning new things about the world. Albiet quite random things most of the time, I feel more informed with the maps I create and am always aware of the insane amount of information that is available at our fingertips. My job involves learning about something in the world, and making it visually relatable for people. I get to learn about culture, politics, travel, trade, people, places, and things while being as creative as a I want with the multitudes of information that I have. I have never looked at a map the same way after my first cartography class with Mark.
No comments:
Post a Comment