Posted in maps, old stuff, tagged complex relationships, map tacks on March 28, 2011 | 2 Comments »
A colleague inherited these map tacks last week and kindly allowed me to photograph them. The copy on the back of the box is priceless. “Graffco map marking products are especially useful for showing complex relationships at a glance”. Next on my map pin scavenger hunt list: a map that shows complex relationships at a glance. I wonder which colleague will inherit that.
Posted in charts & graphs, old stuff, tagged charts, diagrams, graphs, information visualization, karl karsten, willard brinton on February 18, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The proto-infovis specialist, Willard Brinton, has gotten his fair share of attention on the blogosphere over the last few years. With good reason too—this guy was way ahead of the game, writing about proper methods to be implemented while authoring maps, charts and graphs. Much of his writing, though, is pretty thinly veiled personal opinion. His map pin chapter in Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (1914) reveals an extreme phobia of “the janitor’s feather duster.” So it should come as no surprise that he might have a few non-scientifically-based asides. Above is one such aside, a rant against the clock graph: This type of chart should be banished to the scrap heap. Wow. Such hatred for such a seemingly harmless graphic.
I’ll admit it; I first saw this graphic (and the comment about rectangular graphics being easier to make and read) months ago. And it’s been on my mind since. I just couldn’t figure out why Brinton would have so much distain for it. To be honest – as long as the variation between observations is not minute (in which case, why would there be a graphic to begin with?) – I actually quite like the look of this type of graphic. It’s decently easy identify a seasonal trend, is it not? But then I ran across Charts and Graphs (1925), by Karl Karsten. And look at what he has to say about these graphs.
As a chart, this is worthless. Great. So this really piqued my interest. What is the deal with these clock graphs!? And why don’t I hate them when I really, really… should? Well, it turns out some are more successful than others. Check out some examples (all pre-1970).
Arthur Lockwood, in Diagrams: a visual survey of graphs, maps, charts and diagrams for the graphic designer, refers to these two images as “diagrams”, the first showing temperatures throughout the year and the second showing “employment of working hours on a weekly basis for a group of sample farms in Finland”. Successful or not, it’s pretty clear that Finnish farmers are really into the earth’s crust (though I’m not sure that’s the point). Is it this kind of muddled graphic that fueled Brinton and Karsten’s hatred? I look at this lower image and think I may have been caught up in the aesthetic novelty of the others if I was actually getting ready to defend the clock graph… because, I’m sorry, this Finnish Farmer graph is unnecessarily difficult to read.
From Calvin Schmid’s Handbook of Graphic Presentation (1954), here’s another clock graph. I think this one mostly works… but now I’m starting to agree with Brinton. Does the polar coordinate system really add anything to this data set? And as for Karsten’s hatred… well, if you root around a bit more in his book, you’ll find the following two clock graphs.
I think the bottom graph is fairly well readable. But the top one gets a little muddy. Does it have too many subsets of data? It might not, if there is any meaningful correlation. But is there? To me, it simply looks like this department store sells more stuff on Saturdays in December. Do we need a graph for that? And if we do, do we need it to be a clock?
I still think there is a place for these charts. I really do. But after looking closer at those made during the age of Brinton and Karsten, I completely understand the distain.
Posted in maps, old stuff, tagged &c., cartography, chocolate, map pins, pin maps, pushpins on February 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
So, as would be expected, I’ve been digging deeper with this map pin stuff. And my digging has yielded some fairly interesting tidbits. Above is something I came across earlier today, a sort of counter-pin-map option from the National Map Company in 1920 (original ad from Google Books). It’s tough to read the text here, but it essentially says that you can mark up this map with whatever you’d like (ink, paint, pencils, crayons, &c.) and wipe it clean whenever needed. How? It was coated with a magical new substance called “celluloid”. The map doesn’t involve any pins, but it sure offers a viable option for iterative annotating.
Some other recent map pin finds include:
Napoleon preparing for battle with a map and some handmade pushpins.
Newspaper maps intended for annotation (most of which employed pins, by my favorite, which dates from the Civil War, suggested using colored pencils and… soft bread?)
Tons of companies in the early 1900′s dedicated largely to pin maps (Brude, Edexco, C. S. Hammond, & Co., Multiplex, &c.)
It turns out the most well-documented use for pin maps in the first half of the 1900′s was in the realm of public health (it was so widespread that this fella, Swarts, recommended color schemes).
And, finally, not-so-subtle sexism in a book, Woman’s part in government: whether she votes or not, suggesting that women should spend more time making pin maps.
Eh… I think we should all spend more time making pin maps. Here’s how to get started; build a mount like this.
In the meantime, if you live in Seattle, go check out Theo Chocolate’s pin map. It has only been up for a few months and it already looks like this.
Sweet.
Posted in maps, old stuff, Uncategorized, tagged boston, map games, maps on December 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just a quick post for the holiday season. I know, I know – it’s more Operation than Christmas lights, but I couldn’t help myself. Check out this advertisement from the October 1946 issue of Popular Mechanics. Add electricity to any study session and fun will ensue. Just look at these two. That kid is so psyched that he properly guessed Albany… wait, is that Albany? It looks more like Syracuse. Or… Utica? Ach! If only this blog post had some kind correct guess indicator… like a light or something.
On an entirely different note, check out a new cartography and graphics blog on Boston. Bostonography, envisioned and co-authored by Andy Woodruff of Cartogrammar fame, should yield some pretty interesting stuff. We already have a few quick posts. Stay tuned for more!
