Tag: data visualizations

A Striped Circle Map of the French Presidential Election Results

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Julien Gaffuri's striped circle map of the French presidential election results (second round), released 27 Apr 2022

Julien Gaffuri’s map of the second-round results of the French presidential election is, as you can see, extraordinarily busy—and, by the way, extremely processor-intensive: it will slow down your machine—because it’s at the commune level and each circle is scaled to population. (News flash: Paris has lots of people in it.) And those circles are striped circles: the proportion of the votes is indicated by the area taken up by a given colour. The map of the first round results shows more stripes (because more candidates) but is by department, so it’s a little easier both to read and to see how the striped circle format works. It’s an interesting alternative to a choropleth map, and a bit less ambiguous.

Atlas of the Invisible

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Atlas of the Invisible, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s collection of new maps and visualizations based on “enormous” datasets, is out today in the United States from W. W. Norton. (The British edition, published by Particular Books, came out in September.)

The Royal Geographic Society reprints a map from the book showing the flow of ice on the Greenland ice cap and interviews James about how they used the data. James has also published some education resources related to the book on his website. And of course there’s more at the book’s website.

See John Grimwade’s post about the book, in which he asks the authors about their ideas and process. Also see reviews from Fast Company and the Guardian.

Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Previously: Where the Animals Go.

Related: Map Books of 2021.

A Flurry of New Book Announcements

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

News about upcoming map books has been thin on the ground of late, which is hardly surprising given the havoc the pandemic has wreaked on the publishing industry as a whole. But in just the past two days we’ve seen three significant new book announcements.

Kenneth Field’s long-awaited Thematic Mapping: 101 Ways to Visualise Empirical Data, which takes as its starting point a map of a single event—the 2016 U.S. presidential election—will be out from Esri Press as an ebook on the 31st of August, Ken announced yesterday. Pre-order: Amazon (Canada, UK).

You might remember James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s amazing 2016 book Where the Animals Go. Their next book of data visualizations, Atlas of the Invisible, will be out in September from Particular Books in the U.K. and in November from W. W. Norton in North America. Pre-order: Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

The Quarantine Atlas: Mapping Life under COVID-19 is the byproduct of CityLab’s 2020 project soliciting hand-drawn maps of life under quarantine (previously here and here). In the book version, Laura Bliss matches 65 of those submissions with original essays. Due out in April 2022 from Black Dog & Leventhal. Pre-order: Amazon (Canada).

I’ve updated the Map Books of 2021 page with these books; that page still looks awfully sparse compared with previous years. If there’s a map-related book coming out this year that I haven’t listed, please let me know.

Erin Davis’s Average Colours of the World

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Map: Average Colors of the World (Erin Davis)
Erin Davis

Erin Davis has created maps showing the average colour of each country of the world (plus  maps showing the average colour of each U.S. state and county). She derived the average colour from Sentinel-2 natural-colour satellite imagery; she appends the process and the code to the end of her post. [My Modern Met]

The Incredibly Granular Maps of Data.Pour.Paris

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot

Data.Pour.Paris is a collection of interactive maps about the city of Paris. It’s a lot more interesting—and granular—than it appears at first glance, though. The traffic and real-time metro maps you might expect, but the map of street lights drills down to individual streetlights—and their wattage. Public order complaints are mapped individually, and there’s even a map of the 2018 Paris marathon that tracks the progress of individual runners. They’re the work of French engineer Benjamin Tran Dinh, and they’re neat. They speak as much to the availability of such data as the ability to map it. [Maps Mania]

Previously: Le Grand Paris en Cartes.

Diagrams of Power

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Diagrams of Power, a group exhibition taking place right now at OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery in Toronto, “showcases art and design works using data, diagrams, maps and visualizations as ways of challenging dominant narratives and supporting the resilience of marginalized communities.” Curated by Patricio Dávila, it runs until 29 September. Free admission.

Update: The above is lacking in some detail; here’s the Toronto Star review to make up for it.

Advice on Choropleth Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last month Lisa Charlotte Rost published a post on Datawrapper’s blog full of tips about choropleth maps: when to use them (and when not to), how to make them better (lots about colour use), along with some examples of good ones. Worth bookmarking.

She followed that up with another post focusing on one particular factor: the size of the geographic unit. Choropleth maps that shows data by municipality, county, region, state or country will look quite different, even if they show the same data. Averages tend to cancel out extremes. She gives the following examples:

Comparing Cartograms

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Datawrapper

Datawrapper has added population cartograms to its map collections, and in its blog post discusses the advantages and disadvantages of cartograms vs. geographical maps, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of some of the different types of cartograms. Turns out that cartograms are kind of like map projections: each has its pros and cons; each is better suited to some uses than to others. [Caitlin Dempsey]

Snowfall as Animated Relief Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Here’s something neat from Garrett Dash Nelson: “the total seasonal snowfall in the continental US for 2017–2018 so far, shown as a relief map,” where total snowfall is expressed as elevation. That’s neat. Even neater: the animated gif that depicts it (a frame of which is above). Even neater than that: he shows how he made said animated gif.

Examples of Multivariate Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Jim Vallandingham looks at multivariate maps:

There are many types of maps that are used to display data. Choropleths and Cartograms provide two great examples. I gave a talk, long long ago, about some of these map varieties.

Most of these more common map types focus on a particular variable that is displayed. But what if you have multiple variables that you would like to present on a map at the same time?

Here is my attempt to collect examples of multivariate maps I’ve found and organize them into a loose categorization. Follow along, or dive into the references, to spur on your own investigations and inspirations!

Jim’s examples of maps that display more than one variable include 3D maps, multicolour choropleth maps, multiple small maps, and embedded charts and symbols. Useful and enlightening.

Ingo Günther’s World Processor Project

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Ingo Günther’s World Processor project, which projects historical, political, social and environmental data visualizations onto literally hundreds of illuminated globes, gets a writeup in, of all places, Bloomberg’s Pursuits section, which treats his globes as a luxury good: “as much fine-art object as C-suite accoutrement.” This seems rather beside Günther’s point, in spectacularly late-capitalist fashion. [The Map as Art]

I first told you about Günther’s work in 2005. Here’s his home page, and an exhibit at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.