Exercises in Cartography - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 21

Fig. 2.7 Generalisation exercise (by Prof. E. Spiess, Basic Cartography Exercise manual , 1991)
with different results
so as to render the differences between the results of individual cartographers as
small as possible. Legend-sheets with the exact dimensions of the symbols and lines
to be used served as examples but, even when these specifications were adhered to
as strictly as possible, students still ended up with a wide range of different results.
When we confronted the students with the variation in their results, there was a
meta-effect in this exercise—as the students could see that the results of their
colleagues would deviate to some degree from their own, and this showed them a
bandwidth of cartographic licence, it showed them that different results based on
the same original data still were acceptable to a certain degree (Fig. 2.7 ).
Another drawing technique that had to be mastered through exercises where
some geographic knowledge came in handy was hill-shading, which we would do
with pencil, but which Swiss and Austrian experts would apply with airbrushes.
Picking the correct colour schemes or colour ramps is another item to do
exercises in, in order to make sure that students see for themselves which colour
combinations work or not, when diverging hues should be opted for, or how a
colour ramp can be extended to accommodate a larger number of classes. Cynthia
Brewer here helps students doing exercises on these items enormously with her
Colorbrewer website ( http://colorbrewer2.org ).
For myself I have found much profit for the students in an exercise in which they
are asked to render a same phenomenon, using the same figures in as threatening a
way and in as inconspicuous a way, just by manipulating colours and class
boundaries. By doing this exercise they realize the impact of their selection of
class boundaries and colour schemes.