Questions for a Cartographer

[student]

Hi, I am an high school student taking lessons in Earth Science. As part of my study I have an assignment to interview a cartographer and learn more about mapping. I would appreciate if someone can provide me with relevant answers to the questions below. Thank you in advance for helping me with my assignment.

Questions:

As a cartographer

1. Where or how do you get the data to create/build maps?
2. How do you validate if the data is correct and if it matches with the real world physical layout?
3. Are there set methods or practices that you use to create maps, if you do could you describe them?
4. How has modern world technology helped or improved the work of cartographers?
5. What map qualities do you consider to be essential for a map to be viable and useful?

Thank you.

[Kellerica]

Hey, just to give you a heads up:

While I think we might have some people here who do real world mapping, I dare say a pretty large majority of the Guild's userbase is more focused on mapping fictional locations. I don't know how many people will be able to provide useful answers to the questions you have posted. Many of us, myself included, are more artists than scientists.

I hope you'll find someone to aid you - I'm afraid the Guild isn't the best place for something like this, but hopefully I'm wrong

[JoshStolarz]

Hello, and welcome to the Guild! It definitely sounds like an interesting project, and hopefully somebody will be able to weigh in with more expert advice.

As Kellerica pointed out though, I would consider myself more of an illustrator than a true cartographer. I care more about telling a story and conveying the essence of a landscape to the viewer than just providing an accurate survey of a landscape. But, I know there are people here that are more scientifically minded than I, so hopefully they will be able to weigh in.

Either way I wish you the best in your project!
- Josh

[Azélor]

We have a bunch of users like me who can put a lot research efforts into our maps but it's still just a hobby.
Our maps and how they are done is very different that was professional cartographers do as a job/work.

[DrWho42]

hello and welcome to the guild! i agree with the rest that many of us are more focused on fictional mapping than the real-world equivalent

[Tiana]

There is a subreddit, go to r/gis to ask this question. r/mapmaking and also r/dataisbeautiful (I think) might have the audience with the right people in it, but r/gis is going to get you the IRL cartographers you want. While I've done several real life maps I still don't feel suited to really answering your questions because I feel like you're interested in the data of mapping and we're interested in the historical art of mapping and how it applies to creating fictional worlds around here. What you WANT is to interview someone who works in ArcGis or qGis, probably involved in coding in Python.

I get the data to build my real life maps from the hard work of many other people who have come before me. The world IS mapped. Often what I've been tasked with is recreating a specific historical map with specific regions noted for a history book. The closest I've ever come to a commission where I would have been verifying drawn data against physical world data was a commission that never ended up happening (too bad really). It was a church and they had a new staff member who couldn't find the lights and remember where they all went and they were like "oh hey you draw maps!"

That said, I wouldn't say it's impossible, there may be people here involved in contemporary technical mapping. I'd wager most of us are illustrators first, sadly not true cartographers as they work in 2019's technology.

And I'm sure all of us do have an opinion on the last question. Legible text or symbols is the key thing I believe a map needs to have, after of course, some sort of data that it's visualizing. Because it's a sight-based engagement, being clear to read is important to converting that data into something we can use. A map intended to go into a fantasy novel needs to have the locations the heroes visit throughout, and a map intended to show me where the shoe stores are in proximity to my location in the mall needs to have symbols which are recognized by mall patrons (...I just realized I was really inspired by bad shopping mall maps and how horribly lost I felt in West Edmonton Mall when I was young and it's tripping me out) and a map intended to show you how to put your chair from Ikea together might only need some arrows and illustrations of the pieces of the chair. What matters is that the journey in question can be clearly understood from the map. A map is something of use. Next to technology, I believe graphic design is one way in which our maps have improved incredibly over the years. There's some absolutely lovely woodcut maps, and some absolutely illegible ones which are navigational but nightmarish on the eyes. The maps of 2019 are crisp and usable. I even bought a paper map of the province and would you believe it, I had no trouble folding it back up.

Welcome to the Cartographer's Guild.

[student]

Thank you all very much for you responses and sorry for the inconvenience. I was able to find the answers I was looking for.