on bringing cartographic aesthetics to the workplace - a challenge
[OT from cottage renovations]
[excerpted from an email sent to colleagues at work]
Thematic maps, long appreciated as an information-rich visual medium for conveying dense geospatial information, have an aesthetic that one often takes for granted. It doesn't have to be that way:
See Tim Wallace on bogus art maps.
Personally I think we should look to our municipal art heritage and come up with a Jackson Pollock themed map - with live zoning or emergency response data of course - to commemorate the centennial of his birth next year.
This is not as far fetched as one might think - a Mondrian set came out of some GPS drift analysis I did last year, and it occurs to me that some of the heat maps I've been tinkering with (not on company or customer time) could adapt rather well to a Pollock theme.
I don't really expect anybody to be interested in taking it on, but if a suitable opportunity comes along over the next few months I will try to shape the outputs in that direction.