Matthew Ericson, the deputy graphics director at the NY Times, posted recently about making wise mapping choices. His explanations draw nicely from data visualization guidelines, and I remember showing those New Orleans maps to my students. “When the interesting patterns aren’t geographic patterns” is what I’ve referred to in the past as “graphs and charts that display geographic data with alternative representations of space.” I talked about this category earlier this month at Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship. GapminderWorld’s chart is a classic example. Their “map” tab is a bit of a bore…
I’m not sure whether she’s still at this job, but I liked this 2007 interview that mapmaker Erin Aigner gave about her work at the NY Times.