How Maps Work Representation, Visualization, and Design (Hardcover)

From the Publisher:
This book is the first systematic integration of cognitive and semiotic approaches to understanding maps as powerful, abstract, and synthetic spatial representations. Presenting a perspective built on four decades of cartographic research, along with research from other areas, it explores how maps work at multiple levels - from the individual to societal - and provides a cohesive picture of how the many representational choices inherent in mapping interact with the processing of information construction of knowledge. Utilizing this perspective, the author shows how the insights derived from a better understanding of maps can be used in future map design. Although computers now provide the graphic tools to produce maps of similar or better quality than those produced by previous manual techniques, they seldom incorporate the conceptual tools needed to make informed symbolization and design decisions. The search for these conceptual tools is the basis for How Maps Work.MacEachren (geography, Pennsylvania State U.) offers a general framework for the study of maps and map use, and a plan for finding out why particular maps do or don't work in particular ways. His integration of cognitive and semiotic approaches is intended as a basis for cartographic/geographic/information design graduate seminars dealing with human-map interaction, spatial representation, and topics related to scientific visualization. He suggests it may also be useful for cognitive psychologists, linguists, human factors engineers, sociologists, semioticians, cognitive scientists, and others exploring aspects of spatial representation. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.