Exercises in Cartography - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 15

Chapter 2
Exercises in Cartography
Ferjan J. Ormeling
Abstract By describing the scope and intent of contemporary cartographic
exercises, the author pictures the changes that took place in cartography during
the last 50 years in the format of an autobiography. Although these exercises
changed from manual and repetitive ones towards digital and unique tasks, during
this development some freedom of expression was lost, as current GIS-oriented
software packages limit the design options. The author calls for exercises where the
geographical insight of cartography students is strengthened, where they are made
aware of the bandwidths of cartographic license and of the existence of many
different but valid ways of rendering the same realities. Also, through exercises
where they are addressed as map users, trainees may realise the map-use impact of
the graphical decisions taken and the real challenges cartographers face in
visualizing geospatial data for decision support.
2.1 Cartographic Apprentice
When I first started as an apprentice atlas editor, in 1961, I had to learn how to apply
lettering to maps, and I spent many evenings just drawing the letter o. After a week I
graduated to variations of o, such as a, b, d, g, q, c and e or p. Then I moved on to n,
and varied it with h, u and m; the next month would be focused on i and l, f, j, t and odd
letters like k, r, s, v, w, y and z. The next step would be to combine these letters and to
get used to the differing distances between them. I did not feel particularly enriched by
these long evenings and I merely wondered whether I had opted for the right
profession. Fortunately, nowadays this lettering is done digitally and cartography
students won't loose time in doing lettering exercises—at least not on lettering itself,
but they still have to do exercises in the application of geographical names to maps.