From GIS to Web Maps - Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography - page 21

the various signs used when producing maps. This topic
gives a series of visual variables that shape and add
meaning to the “markings” on the paper [BER 67: 42].
Through this “visual grammar”, which aims to be
exhaustive, Bertin attempted to standardize the production
of maps and, finally, to reduce interferences in the
transmission of information. In order to achieve this, the
format of the data on the map should combine clarity and
efficiency as summarized by Andrienko and Andrienko:

A visualisation is good if it permits immediate
extraction of the necessary information, i.e.
finding the answer to the observer's question at a
single glance, with no need to move one's eyes or
to shift one's attention and involve memory.
[AND 06, p.173]

Although there is no concrete evidence of the mutual
influence or of any correspondence between Robinson and
Bertin [PAL 11], the research on map design of the first
coincides with that on “graphic semiology” of the second.
They share the common goal of easing the transfer of
information and reducing errors of interpretation. They
concur, both on the end and on the means, of map

communication:

Map design and semiology of graphics have
several points in common. First of all, they both
focused on the elements of the map, the signs,
which were considered to compose a system, a
true language. Second, they organised the map
production around what could be called a new
paradigm: efficiency. [PAL 11]

Nevertheless, Bertin's work is more a lessons-learned
process rather than the result of empirical research. He
neither advocated laboratory experiments with map users
nor carried these out himself to try and measure the