Andy Woodruff  · Cartographer | Blog

General cartography

The drinking society with a mapping problem

13 October 2009 tagged conference, nacis with 3 comments

I’ve recently returned from Sacramento after attending the 2009 conference of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), and I wish to briefly plug the organization here in case either of my readers is not already familiar with it. If you work with maps, you should join NACIS and go to its meetings. Consider these […]

Warning: do not attempt to use this map as a map

3 September 2009 tagged bad maps, ethics with 3 comments

A small globe spotted for sale at Target the other day: Apparently we’re allowed to just put warning labels on our maps instead of trying to make them, you know, accurate. Either that or this sphere has particularly sharp corners and is not safe for a classroom full of children. Remember, bad maps kill! Cartographers, […]

Don’t make me search!

1 June 2009 tagged interactive maps, map browsing, online maps, search with 2 comments

(Update, June 19: How ’bout that? Google has just added a feature that is almost exactly what I was wishing for in this post. Read about it at the Google LatLong blog. At least I got this post out just before that was added, so I don’t look entirely like a fool.) There’s a lot […]

Sparkmaps?

16 March 2009 tagged books, interesting maps, sparklines with 2 comments

I’m catching up on some of the reading I meant to do a couple of years ago, when I was a geography/cartography student, beginning with the original intersection of urban geography, planning, and mental maps: Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960). The subject of the book aside, something cool here is what’s going […]

I hate your favorite election map

4 November 2008 tagged cartograms, election maps, rants with 11 comments

I am not by nature an angry person—in fact my friends at times find me irritatingly even-tempered—nor am I known to truly hate anything, but provocative titles have their place, right? We’ve once again arrived at that special time of (every fourth) year when the internet abounds with maps, charts, and other graphics attempting to […]

Mapping tag clouds

29 October 2008 tagged election maps, generalization, map projects, tag clouds with 3 comments

Over on the Axis Maps blog I’ve written up a side project I began several months ago but never got very far on: mapping the geography of presidential campaign speeches. It’s still an interesting idea, but my colleagues and I didn’t have the time to fully develop it, so you’ll have to settle for some […]