humanitarian.info

Only joking – intelligent design theory is a truckle of incoherent hand-waving. What I meant to say, of course, is that we need to be thinking about better design when it comes to information products, particularly maps. Last week Rich Treves tried to destroy my self-confidence by posting a picture which is invisible to people colour-blind in the red-green spectrum¹ but he agreed that we have a problem in neogeography, a trend which started as GIS became more easily accessible.

One of my colleagues lamented that the new generation of GIS technicians lacked any real training in cartography (or had slept through that lesson on their course) – the ease with which GIS enabled mapmaking had lowered the barrier to entry, and a whole bunch of new folks were making maps without even having read How To Lie With Maps. My colleague had a vested interest – he had originally been a cartographer before training up in GIS. Neither of us were arguing against GIS or against neogeography, both of which are fantastic leaps forward as far as I’m concerned. We were only arguing that there’s a danger that cartography gets left behind, and that’s a problem – not because it’s some sort of artisan skill which needs to be kept alive, but because cartography is more relevant than ever in an age where maps are everywhere.

With more maps in front of more people than ever before, the obligation on the map maker to communicate effectively is imperative – and in the end, that effective communication depends on good design. Rich’s blog is devoted to the question of how to improve design in neogeography² but there’s still a big design gap. The question is, how can we collectively improve our work? The whole point of neogeography is that it lowers the barrier to entry, so a top-down approach (training, qualifications, etc) won’t fly with the community, let alone make an impact; yet there seems to be little in the way of standards or good practice emerging from the grassroots.

1. Since I am one such person I wept uncontrollably even while I was typing my comment in. [↩]
2. And please, won’t somebody fund him to go to Where 2.0 so he can spread the word? [↩]