This was the discussion topic for week 4 in GEOS 457, choose a map from the following URL and give a critique of one of the maps in the report: https://www.pewforum.org/2009/10/07/mapping-the-global-muslim-population/
There was a time when there was a lot of maps within this document, but now that are broken flash links (Quick note here: I did eventually notice there was a .PDF version of the document with all of the maps, this map is still the most interesting in the report). There was however a single abstract map showing a country's size based on the Muslim population. With a lack of choices I chose this map. It also has an interesting premise that I felt I could present a decent critique on.
The map: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2009/10/weightedmap.pdf
The critique:
Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Map Critique.
There was only one map that really caught my eye. Although it was striking in its design initially, in the end I found the map to largely fail at its job of communicating a message in a simple and intuitive manner. This is the map titled, “World Distribution of Muslim Population” on the first page of the webpage and page seven of the .pdf report. The subtitle of the map tells us this is a weighted map showing us a country’s size based on the Muslim population that lives within its borders. (https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/02/PewForum_Muslim_pop_report_1026_revised-01.png)
One of the things this map does well is to grab your attention, it looks different than a normal map and that works to draw you in. It is aesthetically interesting so from a design point it fulfills an important aspect of map making, creating an visually pleasing design (Borden D Dent et al., 2009)
We know that we can break cartography into three important categories (Borden D Dent et al., 2009), and I believe these will provide us with a good framework to evaluate this map. Dent lists these three aspects as Harmony, Composition and Clarity.
Harmony can be thought of as how the varying map elements relate to one another. I think this will be a good place to discuss the role figure and ground plays within map perception. We know one of the most basic ideas around perception is that of our brain to perceive things as a figure or ground (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). Our brain attempts to classify the important from the unimportant, for example a boat on a lake or a skyscraper against the sky. (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). With maps we need to see the same things, having the objects of interest be the figure, while the remainder of the map to be seen as the ground (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). This fundamental is a good place to start our critique of the map in question.
In my opinion this map does a good job creating a figure and ground between the elements. Despite the colors not being very saturated, and having a low contrast with the background, the borders around each country combined with those hues do set the map off the background and achieve a good figure and ground relationship.
Composition of the map defines how well the map comes together as a whole to communicate its intended goal, does it have a cohesive look and feel, is the readers attention directed to the appropriate places on the map (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). It should be clear that the first aspect of map design, harmony, plays into this aspect as well.
There are aspects of this map that I really like from the compositional standpoint, and I touched on these when I talked about it being successful from an aesthetic standpoint. However, beyond its cohesive look I found the composition of the map to work against itself.
One of the key aspects of this map is to communicate the approximate Muslim population in each country. It does this by determining a number for each country based on population and then building an approximate shape of that country out of these blocks. The map succeeds in this through its size weighting, but the additional information it contains, what those populations are could use a little bit of work to communicate the message in a stronger fashion.
For this map to be successful, we need to know what those units are, while this information is in the subtitle, I found it difficult to access. The first thing I am drawn to in this map is the area of highest contrast, the small pie chart in the upper right-hand corner, opposite the title. From here my eyes dive straight into the map and I skip over that critical piece of information, nothing works to draw my eye to the title, or back to the title.
Part of composition is directing the reader through the map in a way that helps to communicate the message (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). In this case I believe removing the pie chart and creating a higher level of contrast with the title, creating a better figure and ground effect would strongly enhance this map. I think there are further steps to be taken here, but we will discuss them when we talk about the map’s clarity.
Another aspect I think could be improved in this map that would help both with the composition and the harmony of the elements would be to work on the colour. The current map uses a series of differing hues to separate the various countries from each other. Each country is different from its neighbor, but colors are repeated throughout the map. I found the colour to be fairly muted on this map and believe more saturated colors would not only be more pleasing (Borden D Dent et al., 2009), but would help to create a better contrast with the background.
I believe we could go one step further though and create a choropleth map based on the population. This would serve to create areas of high contrast in the areas of highest population and provide a level of redundant coding making the map much more intuitive to understand (Borden D Dent et al., 2009).
The final area I wanted to look during my critique of the map is clarity, or how well we can recognize the various elements on the map itself (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). After all, if we can’t recognize enough of the elements of the map it can fail completely in its task.
Looking quickly at the map I can identify the following items: geographic entities, a title, and a pie chart. The element I personally had the most trouble locating, which is a key aspect of understanding a map is the legend. Why is that though? The legend is placed front and center in the middle of the map.
Maps can be thought of as a series of layers, with various map elements sitting at each layer within the map (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). Each of these layers need to be well composed within themselves, but also with the rest of the map, and these layers serve to make the map understandable (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). You can think of it in terms of a reader looking at the geographic entity layer, and then switching to the information layer, these layers help the reader differentiate the various aspects of the map (Borden D Dent et al., 2009).
The reason I had some trouble finding the legend on this map, is because it exists on the same layer as the cartographic elements of the map. This makes it difficult to differentiate it from them. One of the reasons I think this is occurring is due to the idea of perceptual grouping, our brain wanting to place similar objects into a single category (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). The legend looks the same as the other geographic entities, nothing separates it, so we are tending to group it together and see it as just part of the map.
Much like my idea behind the title of the map I believe this needs to have a higher level of contrast with its surrounding area to move it to a different level, perhaps the techniques we end up using for the title could be mirrored here, thus moving our eyes from the title to the legend and then finally to the map itself giving us the best chance of understanding it. This ties directly back into the ideas of composition and directing a reader through the map.
The final aspect of this map I wanted to touch on is how clear the actual geographic entities are. The very thing that makes this map striking are some of the most problematic to me. My brain only really recognizes this as a spatial distribution because of the names. If we removed them, I would be unable to orient myself on this map. Even with the names my brain wants to make Africa into Australia. Using a more traditional map layout will allow readers to immediately know they are looking at a map, not a fancy chart of some type.
It is not lost on me that the very thing this map is trying to drive home, which it does once you understand the map is the very thing that makes this map initially unapproachable for me. After spending some time with it, the reader figures out what is what. Where the legend is, what the little boxes mean and the numbers mean. That this is an abstract representation of space. After the reader spends time with it the map succeeds, but it requires a reader to put that effort into it.
Some of the changes I proposed above while perhaps making the map more intuitive will bring new issues to the forefront. Removing the pie chart for example will create an unbalanced map, requiring new though to be put into the layout (Borden D Dent et al., 2009). Most importantly moving away from the weighted size of the countries to something more recognizable will dramatically change how this map is communicating its message. The interplay of the elements within a map are complex and require considerable thought about how they are laid out, changes in one area can lead to needing changes in another area of the map (Borden D Dent et al., 2009).
As a final step in my critique, I created a quick mockup in a graphics program to implement some of the key changes I identified: Higher contrast legend and titles, moving the units to the legend, more saturated colours and the removal of the pie chart. I also added in a choropleth map of world Muslim population in the upper right-hand corner. The reason for this was twofold, one was to create a better balance and the other would be a visual anchor between a recognizable world globe and the abstracted weighted map. This would of course require the weighted map to use the same color scale as the global inset map (Dunya, 2009; Pew Research, 2009).
With a good knowledge of maps gained through theory combined with the insight have having read numerous maps, the modern GIS professional is able to try potentially hundreds of map ideas before settling on one they feel best fits the needs of the story being told (Borden D Dent et al., 2009).
Mockup
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| (Dunya, 2009; Pew Research, 2009). |
Works Cited.
Borden D Dent, Jeffrey S Torguson, & Thomwas W Hodler. (2009). Cartography: Thematic Map Design (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Dunya, H.
(2009, October 3). Muslim Population 2009. Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muslim_population_map_2009.png
Pew
Research. (2009, October 7). Mapping the Global Muslim Population. Pew
Research Center.
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