Maps and stuff. Fun things.
Here is another look at the 2016 presidential election. This map uses adjacent proportional semi-circles to directly compare the number of votes between two parties. This head-to-head method is a bit better at reducing the symbol overlap issue of a standard proportional map that uses co-incident full circles. There’s enough overlap issue in this map … Continue reading On the Bubble
It’s an election cartogram, ok. But I tacked on some tacky graphics so now the hexagons look like cubes! Pew pew! If you are curious about how to make it, and/or want to re-use my cubifying graphics (a “cube front” image and a “cube back” image sandwich the graduated symbol layer) then have at it … Continue reading Electo-Cubo-Gram
Here is a map in the style of Tim Wallace’s definitive map of the 2016 US Presidential Election. Tim’s unique take, and beautiful craftsmanship, show two Americas, one of Trump and one of Clinton. While there is certainly plenty of truth to the polarization of American politics and the keenly-sensed social barriers that these electoral … Continue reading The Blended America of 2016
A couple weeks ago I got sucked in to the amazing, and pretty cartographically intimidating, realm of fantasy mapping over at the Cartographers’ Guild. I wondered about a few tips to get more typically GIS-ish nerds, like me, thinking more artfully about the maps we make. Here are a few hacks that I came up … Continue reading Fantasy Book Illustration Hacks
“Whoa, you write weird.” I was a lab instructor for an intro to Geographic Information Systems class and I was scribbling something or another on the whiteboard. One of the students, and education major, noticed that my letter writing sequences were an abomination and called me out. I had never noticed it. So I proceeded … Continue reading Handedness
I stumbled on a fun technique the other day that afforded me a quick scale-independent means of adding in hand-drawn landscape features for fantasy-style map-insert things from awesome books. I’ll follow this post up with specifics on how to achieve it, but in the meantime, here is a quick hack for a hand-drawn tolkienish … Continue reading Fantasy Book Illustration Fun
In speaking with some of my fellow map-obsessed, I learned to my chagrin that my Lights On Lights Out map used a color scheme that was pretty much impenetrable to the color deficient. Sorry! It was a good reminder that good visualization should not needlessly alienate up to 10% of the population. Interestingly, I can count … Continue reading Brighter & Dimmer
