Maps - Topics

What makes a colour scheme readable for colour-blind map readers? Is hand-drawn cartography still a skill worth learning? What to look for in a geography encyclopedia or world atlas as a general reference How do cartographers decide what to leave off a map as the scale shrinks? Why are contour lines labelled the way they are on a topographic sheet? Physical and political maps answer different questions about the same territory Choropleth or proportional symbol: which shows a rate better? Reference map vs thematic map: how does the design brief change? Why is Google Earth imagery of some cities years newer than imagery of others? Why does every map projection distort something and which distortion can you live with? How do you tell whether a crowdsourced dataset such as OpenStreetMap is accurate enough for research? Why does Greenland look as large as Africa on a Mercator world map? How do you write a legend that readers understand without being taught? Why are scanned topographic sheets from the 1960s still worth georeferencing today? Which national aerial imagery portals are worth using for free high-resolution photos? How do you read contour lines on a topographic map to judge whether a hike is steep? What does a map scale ratio actually mean for a day's walk? Reading coordinates off a paper topographic map with a roamer and a scale bar Grid squares vs named regions: which way of indexing a map helps you remember where things are? What does an upside-down world map reveal about map conventions? How do you simplify a coastline without making it look obviously wrong? How do you navigate with a paper map and compass once GPS fails? How much does typography and labelling decide whether a map is legible? How do you read a grid reference on a national survey sheet? Which world map projection is fairest and does fairness even make sense? Which map type shows election results most honestly? How do world maps handle Antarctica and why is it usually stretched? Why do some world maps put the Pacific Ocean in the middle? Why a city's official coordinates point at a city hall or a geometric centroid How trustworthy are crowd-sourced maps once you leave the city? How do the Peters and Mercator world maps differ in what they emphasise? Why two atlases list different areas for the same country