[Sigia-l] information in cartography symbols

[Ruth Kaufman]

On Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 06:17 AM, Jursa, Jan (init) wrote:
> the application i am working on is a closed GIS application. i would 
> say,
> the main problem is that the user is allowed to turn different layers 
> of the
> map on and of which results in an unpredictable combination of 
> different
> signs per zoom level. a semiotic chaos, so to speak.

Yes, I'm familiar with this kind of visual mess. What do you mean by 
"closed GIS application"? Is it a home-grown application or one of the 
major GIS applications like ArcView? Are your users doing analysis of 
geographic information? Or are they simply viewing a data set that 
you've compiled? The reason I'm asking is that if they're power users, 
doing analysis and creating the maps, themselves, then the design, 
utility, and readability of the maps is in their hands. You can get a 
graduate degree in GIS. If you're creating some kind of presentation, 
on the other hand, then yes - I see how you could quickly run into 
design issues as you've begun to describe. Can you describe in more 
detail the context of use of these maps?

Best regards,
Ruth


> Check out Part 2 of Alan MacEachren's book, How Maps Work. This part is
> called 'How Maps Are Imbued with Meaning'. It's fairly academic and not
> a bad introduction to semiotics.
>
> In any case, I'll also take a crack at your question. Have you
> considered a different kind of symbology to represent your second data
> set? Instead of adding more symbols to a map, how about shading a
> region with a color or pattern, for example. It really depends on the
> nature of the information you're trying to represent. Generally
> speaking you can use symbologies of many sorts:
> - points (symbols are highly abstract, icons are more pictorial) (0
> dimensions)
> - lines (1 dimension)
> - areas (2 dimensions)
> - aggregations of symbols (3 dimensions)
> - relief shading (3 dimensions)
> - replicant maps or animations to show change over time (multiple
> dimensions)
> - language (labels, callouts, etc.)
> - accompanying charts & graphs
> - others...
>
> You can also modify your data and derive new sets of values that are
> easier to show on a map. For example, if you're showing information
> about the population of an area relative a pollution index of some
> sort, you might be able to derive a value such as the ratio of air
> quality degradation to population change over a 10 year period or
> something like that. Then you only have to map one data set instead of
> two. I'm just pulling this out of my hat, and not sure if it is at all
> relevant. Let me know if you have any more specific questions.
>
> HTH,
> Ruth
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