Cartographic Perspectives

Visual Storytelling with Maps

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Visual storytelling describes the communication of stories through illustrations, graphics, imagery, and video instead of, or in addition to, oral, written, and audio formats. Compared to their popularity and wide reach, empirical research on map-based visual stories remains limited. We work towards infilling this gap through an empirical study on data journalism, providing the first assessment of four emerging design considerations for visual storytelling with maps: story map themes and their constituent narrative elements, visual storytelling genres, visual storytelling tropes, and individual audience differences. Specifically, we recruited 125 participants to an online map study, requiring them to separately review two visual stories and respond to a series of free-response and Likert scale questions regarding their retention, comprehension, and reaction. We followed a 2×2×2 factorial design for the visual stories, varying their themes (US presidential campaign donations, US coastal sea-level rise), genres (longform infographic, dynamic slideshow), and tropes (color highlighting, leader lines), while holding other design dimensions constant. The story theme did not influence the participants’ total retention or comprehension, indicating that a three-act narrative and its constituent elements can be applied consistently and effectively across variable kinds of topics. Instead, genres and, to a weaker degree, tropes influenced total participant retention, pointing to the importance of intentional design in map-based visual storytelling. Participants overall performed better when the visual storytelling designs used longform infographics or “scrollytelling” (genres) to structure content and leader lines (tropes) to visually accent information. In contrast, the story theme influenced audience reaction, with participants feeling significantly more concerned about and upset with the US presidential campaign donations story compared to the US sea-level rise story. Individual audience differences by expertise, motivation, and prior beliefs also influenced participant reaction. Our study signals a need for establishing a research and education agenda on map-based visual storytelling in both cartography and data journalism.

That’s a Relief: Assessing Beauty, Realism, and Landform Clarity in Multilayer Terrain Maps

Nathaniel A. K. Douglass, Carolyn S. Fish — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Terrain maps are often composed of shaded relief along with other raster layers which we call thematic terrain layers to create aesthetically pleasing and clear maps of physical geography. Despite that the interplay of layers is of primary concern to a cartographer, much of the research on terrain mapping has focused on studying terrain layers individually. This research aimed to fill this gap by evaluating the effect of combining shaded relief with thematic terrain layers and assessing ratings of beauty, realism, and landform clarity in an exploratory online user study. Specifically, we tested the combination of: manual, multidirectional, and ray-traced shaded relief with three thematic terrain layers: hypsometric tinting, land cover, and orthoimagery. There are five main findings from this exploratory study: (1) there was a direct correlation between beauty and realism scores, (2) the manual relief we tested was consistently rated lowest for beauty, realism, and landform clarity, and orthoimagery was rated the highest for beauty and realism, (3) shaded relief was more influential than thematic terrain layers on landform clarity ratings, (4) participant’s geographic familiarity had a significant impact in four specific instances of the user study, and (5) neither shaded relief or thematic terrain layers were the sole contributors to map reader perceptions of beauty, realism, or landform clarity. We conclude by identifying limitations in our stimuli design and presenting ideas for future research studies on terrain design.

A Stylistic Study of the Hand-Painted Winter Panorama Maps of Pierre Novat

Nolan Mestres — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0700

I present a study of the hand-painted winter panoramas of Atelier Novat, a workshop founded by Pierre Novat (1928–2007) in the 1960s, whose style was perpetuated by his children Arthur and Frédérique. I offer a portrait of Pierre Novat and a brief historical overview of the workshop. The contribution of the paper is to describe the style of Novat through the analysis of its constituent elements: creation process, color palette, terrain deformation, light effects, and surface texture (trees, rocks, roads, and buildings). Creating an ideal yet personal representation of a mountain has a dual purpose: a practical one, to help the viewer understand the topography of the region, and an aesthetic one, to depict an imaginary mountain, now iconic of the French Alps, that encourages dreams. The paper concludes with a review of existing methods, in cartography and computer graphics, for the creation of digital panoramas.

Review of Atlas of the Invisible

Rosemary P. Wardley — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Review of Women And GIS: Mapping Their Stories

R. C. Ramsey — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0700

Review of Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Communities and Private Estates

Nat Case — Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 -0700

About the Cover

Daniel P. Huffman — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

For our hundredth issue, we feature an homage to the cover of the very first issue of Cartographic Perspectives, released in March of 1989. This design (with differing background colors) was followed through the first 13 issues, up until the fall of 1992. Head on over to cartographicperspectives.org to view our entire archive, and see how our journal has evolved over the decades. Here's to 100 more!

Masthead

About CP — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Letter from the Editor

Amy L. Griffin — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Paint it as You Ski it: an Interview with Ski Resort Map Artist James Niehues

Charles Preppernau — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 -0700

James Niehues has painted more than 200 panoramic resort maps. His 30-year body of work has changed how mountains are represented, and is familiar to many skiers. Charles Preppernau spoke with the artist to discuss mapping techniques, his new book The Man Behind the Maps, and his new Great American Landscapes Project. Mr. Niehues’ work can be found at jamesniehues.com.

Instructions to Authors

Author Instructions — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800