The timing of this exercise is perfect, because this book recently arrived in the mail: The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth by Rachel Ignotofsky. (I ordered it months ago, forgot about it, and it arrived just in time for this exercise– chock full of maps.)
Check out the use of color in this map! The author chose bright, high contrast colors to display ecosystems across the South American continent. Some color choices are a little unexpected (purple for rainforest and green for savanna, for instance) but the overall colors seem to map to expected colors for specific environments. (Red for desert, blue for wetlands.) I’d guess that she opted for purple rainforest to avoid too many shades of green that might result in contrast issues and reduce readability.
Looking closer at the map, we can see that layering is also employed here to convey additional information onto the map. The map key labels colors and textures used, and national borders and country labels are superimposed over the amorphous color areas. This map essentially has four layers: ecosystem (color and texture), borders (black lines), labels (black text), and interesting facts (mini images with text).
Examining the entire spread, Ockham’s Razor is clearly used throughout. The author keeps everything as simple as possible, reducing all potential content that a map of South America might contain to only the most relevant information. Simple shapes and lines, clear labeling, lots of white space, and easy-to-read text labels all come together to create a clear map that is easily and immediately understood by the reader.
3 Replies to “Informations, Part 2: Serena”
Dear Serena:
Your map book looks really awesome and it reminds me of the world map booklet I grew up reading, which has geographical information, minerals, weather, and many other versions of world maps in a small booklet (I wish I still have it but it was technically my mother’s high school booklet way back in the 1970s I think). I think both principles of color and layering are very nicely illustrated in the map, additionally I am also fascinated by the use of symbols. The 2D drawing really helped enriching the text explanation.
Hi Serena!
This map looks so cool! I like how they took a bit more of an artistic license with the colors while maintaining the integrity of the information displayed. It did take me a moment, however, to realize that the lime green lines seem to be rivers while the black lines are country borders. For some reason, I still expected water to be blue! The problem with throwing unusual colors on things is forcing a user to establish a new set of expectations in order to fully understand the map.
That’s a great point about the rivers! I think since each page background is a different color, the fact that this page was yellow meant that the oceans and rivers were also yellow. I guess otherwise every page would have a blue background, right?
In the other maps in this book, the ocean and other bodies of water are the same color as those spreads, e.g. red, green, purple, etc. It seems like they made a decision to upend expectations of typical water mapping in favor of page color variation.
Dear Serena:
Your map book looks really awesome and it reminds me of the world map booklet I grew up reading, which has geographical information, minerals, weather, and many other versions of world maps in a small booklet (I wish I still have it but it was technically my mother’s high school booklet way back in the 1970s I think). I think both principles of color and layering are very nicely illustrated in the map, additionally I am also fascinated by the use of symbols. The 2D drawing really helped enriching the text explanation.
Hi Serena!
This map looks so cool! I like how they took a bit more of an artistic license with the colors while maintaining the integrity of the information displayed. It did take me a moment, however, to realize that the lime green lines seem to be rivers while the black lines are country borders. For some reason, I still expected water to be blue! The problem with throwing unusual colors on things is forcing a user to establish a new set of expectations in order to fully understand the map.
Christine,
That’s a great point about the rivers! I think since each page background is a different color, the fact that this page was yellow meant that the oceans and rivers were also yellow. I guess otherwise every page would have a blue background, right?
In the other maps in this book, the ocean and other bodies of water are the same color as those spreads, e.g. red, green, purple, etc. It seems like they made a decision to upend expectations of typical water mapping in favor of page color variation.