Welcome to my first cartography work!
What is Cartography?
Cartography is the literal making of space through visual interpretations of what is around us. It is both geographical science and artwork, and communicates a narrative about spaces to particular audiences. As such, I have chosen the title "The Makings of Cartography" for the series of cartography works I will be posting throughout my GEOB 372 Introduction to Cartography class. In this series, I will be posting my weekly projects and discuss all the ingredients of map making. Unlike my GIS work posts, this series of posts is more concerned with visual communication and will combine elements of graphic design in Adobe Illustrator with my previous ArcGIS knowledge.
Why Cartography?
Cartography shapes our understandings of the world. From the cartographer's perspective, they are designing a 2D illustration of a complex 3D world through decisions of what projections to use, what spatial units to categorize data through, and what symbols should be used to represent objects and concepts in the real world. From the map reader's perspective, they are looking for knowledge about a place: whether it is how to navigate the place, or how to understand the people, animals, and things that inhabit the place.
Special Purpose Maps
In this first week, I have been tasked with hand-drawing a special purpose map of Downtown Vancouver to familiarize myself with Adobe Illustrator. A special purpose map provides the general location information of a map (ie. physical land features and roads) as well as information of routes or places relevant for a particular audience.
My map of Downtown Vancouver is for SkyTrain users and highlights the SkyTrain route and stations using point, line, and area symbols.
Here are some skills I picked up through this week's project:
- Made special purpose reference map of Downtown Vancouver skytrain route using Adobe Illustrator
- Applied Adobe Illustrator Pen and Ellipse to create point, line, and area symbols for map