Author: John

Remember that feeling you got in your first remote sensing class when Dr. Grossa told you about the wavelengths of light and how blue scatters more easily than red which is why the sky is blue and sunsets are red and you just couldn’t wait to impress your friends and family with this specialized bit … Continue reading Riffing with Light and Shadow

Ah, the map that keeps on giving. I made the first version of this thing nine years ago now. Nine years? It shows hurricanes since 1851, in an atypical projection so that historical hurricanes coalesce into one big storm of storms. This map has served as a “stretch goal” for students taking the Cartography mooc, so … Continue reading How to Make this Map of Hurricanes Since 1851

I had the chance to join Ta Taneka and Wayne Lee-Archer from Esri Australia again to chat about mapping and making and sharing resources with the mapping community. I always have a lot of fun with these wonderful folks and it was an honor to be part of the conversation. You can find their podcast … Continue reading GIS Directions Podcast with Ta Taneka and Wayne Lee-Archer

Here is a map of the Shetland Islands, customized (YouTube link) from this map of Indonesia. Continue reading Shetland

Here is a map of the area around Indonesia. It sports a pretty dramatic vignette, a sculpted terrain, rippley water lines, a paper texture, and that crazy glassy overview map. For your carto-adventure edification, I’ve made a two-part video series showing how to make it. I’ll also list the steps beneath each video if you … Continue reading How to Make this Map of Indonesia

In the hyper-technical world of cartography one must often endure a no-holds-barred review session where a map is scrutinized against a time-tested checklist of must-haves. Title? Check.Scalebar? Check.Legend? Check.North arrow? Check. Only then is it an acceptable spatial document worthy of the masses… …except not really. A really great map can have any, or none, … Continue reading Put a North Arrow On It?

This is a presentation I recorded for the glorious North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS). It’s my favorite carto conference and just jam packed with fascinating folks diving into the fun of map making. In this one, I get into the why and how of YouTube map-making videos. Plus I got to co-present with one … Continue reading Map-Making on YouTube? Cautionary tales, Context, and Encouragement

By golly, it sure was nice chatting with Steven Feldman for the Geomob podcast about the thin veil between art and cartography, stealing opportunities for accidental professional development, and brewing fun into the map-making process. I think I could have continued chatting with Steven well into his evening but he wisely capped it at a … Continue reading Geomob Podcast with Steven Feldman

Just because your map is in the Netherlands, doesn’t mean you can’t brew some terrain hillshade into it! I’m from the glacially-scraped flatlands of Michigan, trust me, I know flat. But I also know that a bit (or a lot) of terrain hillshade on a map can bring it to life. So what can be … Continue reading How to Force Terrain for Maps of Very Flat Areas

This is an 8 foot (aka 2.4 meters or 244 centimeters…why doesn’t anyone use decimeters? decimeters are underused) diameter globe that glows and slowly spins in a building on the campus of Esri. If you want to learn about it’s ideation, creation, inflation, and installation, check out this conflagration of information. Celestial When I was a … Continue reading Big globe, Small World