North American Cartographic Information Society Meeting was held in Minneapolis, MN. It started with one Practical Cartography Day (PCD), where presenters shared tips and tricks to build better and more helpful cartographic products.
Day 1: Practical Cartography Day (PCD)
#1 Making Maps Accessible (Amy Ellison, State of Minnesota)
- Great write-up from Esri on accessibility :
- https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcnews/how-minnesota-is-making-maps-accessible/
- MN state has a fantastic guideline for making accessible map styles for Static and Web maps: https://mn.gov/mnit/about-mnit/accessibility/maps/design.jsp
- Map Design can help with color vision and low-vision users
- Ask questions to tell a good story, and don’t get lost in the weed
- Basemap – contrast is imperative and if possible, don’t use color to only convey information.
- For Imagery, use transparency & mute overuse of basemap
- Patterns and lines – very difficult for low-vision users
- Don’t use shadow text
- Use the tool to put a filer for vision-impaired users to simulate: https://colororacle.org/
- Color contrast tool checker: https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/
#2 Bringing the Joy Back to Mapmaking: Sam Hashemi. Felt
- Web-based map-making tools for everyone: https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/
- Easy to use and easy to share/create and collaborate (google doc for map)
- A lot of engineers and developers from Mapzen, Snap, Carto, and Mapbox teams
- Smart and easy-to-use tools with lots of potential uses to give tools for subject matter experts
#3 Doing Things in R that’s I normally do in Illustrator and Photoshop: Katie Perry (The Washington Post): Katie sharing how to leverage R to do her graphic work for the AP story.
- Katie’s work: https://projects.apnews.com/features/2021/polar-bears-sea-ice/index.html
- Her code for R-studio in GitHub: https://github.com/kt-prry/nacis-2022
#4 Elevate Your Holo Game: Lauren Tierney, The Washington Post:
- Lauren uses the Masking technique for large batches and small batch
- Large batch – Largest and fastest method: Add white stroke -> Add blur transparency 60%
- Small batch – Add color stroke (pick the most common color in basemap) ->Add blur
#5 Making Better Bike Maps
- Make it simple, helpful, clean, and readable without too much information. (cycling centric)
#6 Creating GeoJSON from Images: Casy Miller, Locana
- A web-based tool where you can drop an image and trace it to generate GeoJSON for other purposes:
- GitHub Post: https://github.com/caseymm/img2geojson
- Web Tool: https://caseymm.github.io/img2geojson/
#7 How to Recreate an Old Map Style: Venessa Knoppke-Wetzel, GreenInfo Network.
- Great blog post describing the importance of studying old maps: https://felt.com/blog/vanessa-knoppke-wetzel
- One can use these tools to build the styles: Maputnik and Mapbox Studio
- For fonts – Use Eadui for historical font, Web tool: https://fontlibrary.org/en/catalogue
#8 Visualizing Floodplain: Dan Coe, Washington Geological Survey (DNR)
- Dan showed how to generate a beautiful floodplain map using DEM using a Relative Relation Model(REM) to color hillshade to display the area.
- An excellent detailed tutorial can be found here: https://dancoecarto.com/creating-rems-in-qgis-the-idw-method
- Dataset can be found here: https://www.usgs.gov/the-national-map-data-delivery/gis-data-download
#9 Design Web Map Layouts with ArcGIS Experience Builder: Heather Smith, Esri
- The analogy between Map View -> into Layout is Similar to Web Map -> Web App (layout)
- Think of Web App as Print Layout (Ability to give layout features around Web Map display, widgets, for example).
- Use Experience Builder as a Layout tool for Web App: More customization and modifications.
#10 Centers of Population: Simple Way to Place Symbols Where the People Are – Jonathan Schroeder, Univ of Minnesota.
- Census tracts are optimally placed, so you can use them or Block Group
- Bivariate Proportion Symbol – Counties with population, % of Pop Age Under 18, for example, use the Size of the circle as population and color as Age group.
- Graduate color + Size by proportionally (a good way to show).
#11 Your Next mapping platform: Use and contribute to Open Source Cartography: Dylan Halpern, Univ of Chicago.
- This is a platform tool that has frontend and backend open-source tools for managing, analyzing, and communicating geospatial data
- Introduction to Matico.app https://www.matico.app/
Documentation of this app: https://www.matico.app/docs
Pkgeo.com 