Cartography & Map Design Reading List
2016
I’m often asked for book recommendations—so here are some of the titles that’ve been valuable to me.
One thing you’ll notice: almost none of them are “cartography” books.
That’s intentional.
Modern cartography lies at the intersection of many other disciplines, and there’s much from these disciplines that’s directly applicable to cartography. But there’s also another reason: if someone wanted to create Google Maps or Apple Maps from scratch, there’s currently no book that serves as a good starting point.
So instead of teaching you cartography directly, these books will speak to many of cartography’s foundational elements, such as color and typography.
⭐️ = Chapters or sections that were especially valuable.
🔑 = A key passage, quote, or insight.
ENVISIONING INFORMATION
EDWARD TUFTE
Information Design
⭐️ “Chapter 2: Micro / Macro Readings”, “Chapter 3: Layering & Separation”, “Chapter 5: Color & Information”
🔑 “Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information.”
VISUAL EXPLANATIONS
EDWARD TUFTE
Information Design
⭐️ “The Smallest Effective Difference”
🔑 “Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective.”
DESIGNING VISUAL INTERFACES
KEVIN MULLET & DARRELL SANO
Interface Design
Out of print and hard to find—but its principles are timeless.
⭐️ “Elegance and Simplicity”, “Scale, Contrast, and Proportion”, “Organization and Visual Structure”
INTERACTION OF COLOR
JOSEF ALBERS
Color (and a dash of Typography)
A color is always seen in relation to the colors around it.
🔑 “We can hear a single tone but rarely do we see a single color unrelated to other colors.”
THE ELEMENTS OF COLOR
JOHANNES ITTEN
Color
Explains why certain color combinations work better than others.
⭐️ “The Seven Color Contrasts” (Hue, Light-Dark, Cold-Warm, Complementary, Simultaneous, Saturation, and Extension)
THE ELEMENTS OF TYPOGRAPHIC STYLE
ROBERT BRINGHURST
Typography
Labels are half the map—which means that typography is half the map.
⭐️ “Harmony & Counterpoint”, “Choosing & Combining Type”, the Appendices
🔑 “Typography exists to honor content.”
THE IMAGE OF THE CITY
KEVIN LYNCH
Urban Design / Wayfinding
Paths. Edges. Districts. Nodes. Landmarks. This book will help you understand how others form mental maps of cities.
⭐️ “Chapter III: The City Image and Its Elements”
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER & OTHERS
Design Patterns / Systems Design
Out of all the books, this is the one least related to cartography.
Its value is in how it creates a system of over 250 large- and small-scale design patterns (what its authors call “a pattern language”). Each of the book’s patterns are, in turn, connected to other larger and smaller patterns elsewhere in the language, forming a complete system.
There are many parallels here to creating cartographic design systems.
SEMIOLOGY OF GRAPHICS
JACQUES BERTIN
Graphic Design / Information Design
Valuable for its discussion of the retinal variables (i.e., size, value, texture, color, orientation, and shape).
⭐️ “The retinal variables” (in “Chapter II: The Properties of the Graphic System”)
🔑 “The most efficient graphic constructions are those in which any question, whatever its type and level, can be answered in a single instant of perception, that is, in a single image.”
CARTOGRAPHIC RELIEF PRESENTATION
EDUARD IMHOF
Cartographic Design
A technical guide to creating relief on maps (i.e., representations of mountains, hills, and elevation). Out of all the books above, this is the most specialized.
⭐️ “Chapter 4: The Theory of Colors”, “Chapter 13: Area Colors”, “Chapter 14: Interplay of Elements”
🔑 “Pure, bright or very strong colors have loud, unbearable effects when they stand unrelieved over large areas adjacent to each other, but extraordinary effects can be achieved when they are used sparingly on or between dull background tones.”