Author: John

I’ve been to Columbia Glacier, just west of Valdez, Alaska, three times. The first was as a youngster in 1984, the second in 1987, and the final time in 2000. Each time, the ride by boat to the terminal edge of the ice where it calves into Prince William Sound, took a bit longer. I’ve … Continue reading How to make this map of a melting glacier

Ah the simple pleasures of the World Imagery basemap. So much earth. So much imagery. So many corners of this world to explore. How can we take something so verdant and charming and just ratchet it up to eleven? We’ll use a water mask and some layer effects, that’s how! 0:00 Start out with the … Continue reading How to emboss an imagery basemap

I often struggle to find high resolution polygons for things that tend to change, like water, urban, ice, whatever. Here’s how you can wrangle some up-to-date, detailed, water polygons for your small or medium scale maps (plus five different ways you can style them up)… Here’s the gist… 0:00 Large scale vs small scale0:42 Sentinel-2 Land … Continue reading How to find (and style!) detailed water polygons for your map

I once heard someone say that standard hillshade (one-direction light source) ignores half of the terrain. While this is an exaggeration, it makes a good point. Earth has an atmosphere and light diffuses, bounces, and wraps around a terrain in a manner that a single light direction misses. What’s more, the hues of light behave … Continue reading Throwing Shade In Wild Color

Cartographers will often exaggerate the natural scale of a mapped feature to help it communicate something of its nature. Some examples are vertical exaggeration of terrain or the very existence of point symbols (cities aren’t actually that big). We embellish for effect. Making a river a bit wider at its mouth, where it meets the … Continue reading How to make tapered rivers in ArcGIS Pro

ArcGIS Pro is a serious tool for serious GIS analysis. Are you ready for some seriously charming illustration style cartography? Ok! . . Children’s maps are a valuable thing. They are often the first impressions the world of geography has on every single one of us. What an opportunity! These maps use a handful of tricks and … Continue reading Storybook Cartography

There are lots of reasons to cloak your terrain in a fluffy ephemeral layer of mist. It gives an overall sense of the slope and elevation trends in your view, it showcases meandering river valleys in a charming realism, hilltops peak through with clarity and drama…and it just provides a strange emotional buzz. Clarity through … Continue reading How to add mist to terrain in ArcGIS Online

The one where I chat with Rene Rubalcava about the importance of unstructured data-play, the risk of metrics becoming the goal, where to find inspiration, brewing chaos into professional development, and loving our neighbors! Continue reading The Bounding Box Podcast

I got to join The Geoholics podcast this week and had a fun conversation with Kent Groh, Ryan Kelly, and Nik Smilovsky Here is a link to the episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHBwsGyfAoZE3ra5RaeVB?si=f1f3bdf9ab3b4695 Here’s the episode’s description: Raised by two Geography teachers, it goes without saying that this weeks guest has map making in his blood! The guys … Continue reading The Geoholics Podcast