Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 February 2006 10:37:29
If I havn't mentioned it... I draw maps.
I have a freelance job where clients often come to me asking for a map that is really really different. That excites me, someone wants to use my design skills...wow!, so I create something that pushes the envelope as instructed and they come back with comments like “that doesn't meet standard cartographic conventions” and that frustrates me. %^+@&$#! It's like banging your head against a wall. I can remember the first time it happened over twenty years ago... and it happened again last week. How can you do something different if there is a conventional way that you just can't challenge?
Is there a cartographic god? Did the first cartographer (maybe Caleb, one of the group sent by Moses to map out the land of Canaan) meet that God and get a whole lot of rules on stone tablets about how a map should look? You know “Thou shalt not have a peach coloured sea” or “Thou shalt always have grid numbers running from the bottom to the top of the page” or “type shall always be lined up with the parallels of latitude on the graticule”.
Or maybe there is a United Nations body of cartographic convention with a charter that says “make certain a coastline is always drawn with a 0.2mm line at 100% cyan”?
What th' ?
In reality, this is how it works....an adventurous cartographer draws a map, something on it looks good so everybody else copies that style.
However, creativity is usually not given a chance as the big problem is that publishing houses seem to be full of people held in bondage to, primary school memories of standard cartographic conventions. They demand all maps should look the same as they always have.
If this wasn't a wholly cartographic rant, I'd maybe develop a parallel with traditional church and emerging church... I'll leave that up to you