Blog-on-blog action: Cartastrophe
Here is a shout-out to a new blog by Daniel Huffman, an all-star cartographer in the generation succeeding mine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cartography Lab.
As I was tearing a path of destruction through Madison last week, Daniel introduced me to his blog Cartastrophe, in which he is doing something that I always wanted to do but never possessed the stones, for fear of retribution: picking apart bad maps. There are many, many bad maps out there on the internet, and he’s going to find them and make fun of them. I know that professional cartographers sound like elitist a-holes for doing things like this, and we probably are, but in criticizing bad maps Daniel is offering suggestions for good map design practices. He is also kind enough to say One Nice Thing about each map.
Huffman’s credentials include winning the 2008 National Geographic map award (for his map of Europe’s tallest buildings) and probably other awards I’m forgetting. Secondary shout-out: second prize in that contest went to another UW-Madison Cart Labber and all-around cool guy Ben Coakley for his map of air service in Canada.
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