Hi, all,

I asked our GIS Reference and Instruction specialist, David Medeiros, this question as he is a cartographer by training. He gave me this response and ok'd me forwarding it to the list.

Best,

Julie

****

Julie Sweetkind-Singer

Assistant Director of Geospatial, Cartographic and Scientific Data

Head, Branner Earth Sciences Map Library & Map Collections

397 Panama Mall, 2nd floor

Stanford University

Stanford, CA 94305

650-725-1102

From: David Medeiros <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2015 10:10 AM
To: Julie Sweetkind-Singer
Subject: Re: websites on basic cartographic design?

Well naturally I think my SGC site pulling together cartographic resources on map design is pretty useful ; ) https://sites.google.com/site/sgccart/.

The lecture slides there (with full notes) are a decent set of basics on the most important issues for novice map makers (mostly GIS users).

I'd second the response pointing to the Ordinance Survey site. Good site.

For the best place on the web to ask questions or post work for review I'd send people to CartoTalk @ cartotalk.com.

I know this is a question about web resources but I think it's unlikely that a free website will ever cover the basics in as succinct a way as Krygier and Woods book Making Maps (http://www.amazon.com/Making-Maps-Second-Edition-Visual/dp/1609181662) or the British Cartographic Societies excellent booklet Cartography: An Introduction (http://www.cartography.org.uk/default.asp?contentID=753). I think anyone making maps as part of their work ought to have these on their desktop.

Best,

David

David Medeiros

Geospatial Reference & Instruction Specialist

Stanford Geospatial Center

650.561.5294

@mapbliss

SGC website: bit.ly/stanford_gis

From: Julie Sweetkind-Singer <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2015 6:26 AM
To: David Medeiros
Subject: Fwd: websites on basic cartographic design?

Hi, David,

This will be of interest to you. If you have a response you want to share with the list, send it to me and I can post it.

Julie

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brendan Whyte <[log in to unmask]>
Date: October 8, 2015 at 4:07:15 PM PDT
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: websites on basic cartographic design?
Reply-To: "Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc." <[log in to unmask]>

A journal editor has approached me about websites explaining basic cartographic design principles, to which he can direct authors so that they submit with their papers decent quality maps, suitable for b/w journal reproduction.

I know of the textbooks such as:

Slocum, McMaster, Kessler, & Howard. 2009.
Thematic Cartography and Geovisualization,
3rd Ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall,

Dent, Torguson, & Hodler. 2009.
Cartography: Thematic Map Design,
6th Ed., Boston, MA: WCB-McGraw Hill,

Robinson, Morrison, Muehrcke,Kimerling &Guptill. 1995.
Elements of Cartography,
5th Ed., NY, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,

Are there any websites that give similar information on basic principles (sensible barscales, linework, layout, resolution etc)?The main problem he faces seems to be people using GIS to get an automatic map output for locator or thematic maps, that is too low res, overly detailed, or otherwise unsuitable for b/w reproduction in a journal, in a nutshell, simply badly designed.

Thanks

Brendan