GIS&Tips ‐ Tricks Making Your Maps more “Mappy Maps”

A cartographer acquaintance of mine once told me that when a map is on a coffee table and no one picks it up to examine, it is just a piece of paper. So, in an effort to help others learn tricks of the trade which draw attention to your map, to follow up on the past two columns on customizing text and colors on your maps, and to continue the theme of “never accepting the defaults”, I asked two experienced map makers/cartographers to share some of the things they use to make their maps more “mappy”. When pushing the art-envelope in cartography, attention to detail can be the difference between a map that sits on the coffee table, a good map, and great one.