
The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See - tptacek
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/01/the_best_american_wall_map_david_imus_the_essential_geography_of_the_united_states_of_america_.html
======
barrkel
I have to say, I think the typography / lettering / label placement of the
NatGeo map is significantly better than the Imus map. It's easier for me to
see what's what, and it looks less cluttered somehow, probably helped by
having freer choice of orientation. But I won't deny that there's more
information in the Imus map.

~~~
ars
As I read I jumped ahead to look at the pictures and was all impressed about
the attention to detail on the map on the right - look at how "Kettering" is
curved so it fits. The labels are clear and not fuzzy.

I was impressed with his map.

And then to my surprise I discover that his map is the one on the left!

Maybe in a large printed version his is better? I don't know. All I can tell
from the photos is that the computer generated one is better.

~~~
tptacek
The label for "Kettering" in National Geographic's map is distorted (to
"fit"), set in smaller type, crosses two road paths, and eliminates more
smaller city labels than Imus'.

The irony of this is that these are all very common constraints to graph
layout algorithms --- simple type, minimized crossings, label size and
placement --- and the label you called out as "better" pessimizes them.

Add to that the fact that Imus' map subtly indicates Kettering's position in a
population center (the yellow blob) and gives topographic and foresting
information for the area with a clear contrast between the western and eastern
sides.

Be careful. The Imus map is deceptively detailed (again: _forestation levels_
), and is not shown in its best light in a PNG clip next to a simplified
National Geographic map. You're right; the Imus map looks muddy and harder to
read. That's because it's doing more, and is thus not as well suited to a
laptop screen (or a clip in a web page) as National Geographic's.

------
Terretta
The greatest paper map of the United States I've seen is not this one (though
I ordered this one), it is "USAtlas"[3] created by Richard Saul Wurman using
early Macintosh design tools like Adobe Illustrator 88 and Aldus PageMaker
3.02 on a Mac Iici.

Wurman is cited in "Building Legible Cities 2 Making the Case"[1] and, oh
yeah, created the TED conferences[2].

1\. <http://aprb.co.uk/docs/building_legible_cities2_0.pdf>

2\. <http://wurman.com/rsw/> ( also <http://www.ted.com/pages/16> )

3\. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0139322450/ref=dp_olp...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0139322450/ref=dp_olp_0)

The biggest innovation for me as a frequent long distance driver in the late
80's and early 90's was having every page the same scale. But the clarity of
information on a given page or city was unprecedented, was easily glanceable
while driving, and is still unmatched to this day though Google Maps' data
view comes close while offering more details. But this was hand drawn.

Here's Cincinnati. Notice the state borders vs rivers:

<http://imgur.com/a/MMTZk>

~~~
MaxGabriel
I noticed both your example and the article used Cincinnati as an example
city. Is that coincidence or some sort of cartographic standard?

~~~
Terretta
I chose Cincinnati to match up with the examples in the Slate article.

------
lkozma
The Imus map does look nicer, but as a computer geek I am more interested in
how one could capture the heuristics he uses and better automate the process.
Surely all (or most) of the label placement, typography etc. ideas he uses
could be captured in a set of criteria that could improve the state of the art
in computer-mapmaking. This is similar to what Knuth did to maths typesetting.

~~~
phillmv
>Surely all (or most) of the label placement, typography etc. ideas he uses
could be captured in a set of criteria that could improve the state of the art
in computer-mapmaking

Yeah. The following quote really annoyed me:

>He used a computer (not a pencil and paper), but absolutely nothing was left
to computer-assisted happenstance.

Happenstance!

~~~
tptacek
What's wrong with that word?

~~~
colomon
Well, if Buddy spent two years writing the algorithms to dynamically place the
names on the on-line maps, how is that placement "happenstance"? Just as much
effort went into it as went into the hand-drawn map...

~~~
tptacek
The _algorithm_ isn't happenstance, but any individual label placement on the
map could be.

------
moultano
I'm originally from Cincinnati, and the National Geographic Map makes better
choices about what to show. Norwood and Newport are important. The Roebling
bridge is not.

~~~
tptacek
I'm in Chicago and agree generally; National Geographic's choice of small town
labels is better curated. My guess is that Imus worked from population
statistics and optimized to fit the most "people" in the labels he chose.

That said, it seems straightforward that National Geographic would have
better-curated detail (they presumably spent millions to build theirs with a
team of people). Meanwhile, the actual map layout Imus constructed is pretty
amazing, and National Geographic's is merely legible (look at the river label
in Cincinatti again, and the confusion it caused on this very thread).

------
johnohara
Interview with map creator and cartographer David Imus.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AatQI-wCbj4>

Nice close-ups of the map and his own words.

------
agwa
Beautiful map. You can buy it here:

<http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780981855127-0>

Just $12.95 plus shipping (which was a few bucks for me).

~~~
vtail
Or on Amazon from the same publisher: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0981855121/ref=dp_olp...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0981855121/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&storeAttribute=b&qid=1325527559&sr=8-10&submit.see-
all-buying-options=see-all-buying-options&condition=new)

~~~
tokenadult
"Out of Print--Limited Availability" is what I see on Amazon for that item.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981855121/sr=8-10/qid=1325...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981855121/sr=8-10/qid=1325527559/)

~~~
_delirium
When I first clicked his link there was one Amazon Marketplace copy listed for
$12.95, which must've since been bought.

------
mrb
This map is small: 4x3 feet. I would like a large map, maybe four times the
area (8x6 feet), but with the same density of information. One could represent
four times the number of towns, streams, roads, etc. I want to hang it on a
wall, and be able to read it for hours, always discovering new places to
visit.

Anyone know of such a map?

------
unwind
I tried going to the author's site (<https://imusgeographics.com/>) to see
what the map costs just out of curiosity, but at this point the site seems to
be down due to exceeding its quota. Too bad.

~~~
conradev
Its in Google's cache.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fv84WEq...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fv84WEqKI6sJ:imusgeographics.com/+David+Inus+map&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
danking00
The Google cache shows a laminated, rolled version of the America map for
$39.95.

Google cached a PDF of a speech he gave entitled "Geographic literacy for all
North Americans"

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:nkZ4MXBys8EJ:...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:nkZ4MXBys8EJ:https://imusgeographics.com/sites/default/files/assets/files/NACIS_speech_03.pdf+https://imusgeographics.com/sites/default/files/assets/files/NACIS_speech_03.pdf&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiml1bJTjVqZmWPrUnj12ATRwtw83yHC089bXDn-
sytBkBTAVtFjdszmKdIi82azyvc-eCKy-mL3HfNMstrY1BInfV-
AxO1dJLWumkIz3NkCYEU5JlcHhOjPObAdJN6Ha2k6Gql&sig=AHIEtbRCu1_UI13wpWCQ0BnqBgsAsXkE5A&pli=1)

------
egypturnash
I only see one little image at the head of the article, but the text refers to
what seems to be a few closeup shots. I bet it's Slate's damn tablet view
dropping them on the floor. God I hate Slate's tablet view, it's slow and
makes reading HARDER.

edit. Found the Normal view link. Yep. Tablet view is missing images. YAY.

~~~
BauerUK
I'm sure Slate (and in turn other tablet/mobile users) would appreciate it if
you took a minute to report the specific details of your issue:

<http://help.slate.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=15081>

~~~
egypturnash
I commented on the article in question about its lack of images on the iPad,
at least!

------
viraptor
Looking at both maps, I see only one thing: they are both so much worse than
new interactive maps... There's too much information and not enough
"whitespace". They're so generic, it's hard to find some specific thing on
them. If I'm looking for highways, I'm not interested in areas of Chicago. If
I'm looking for known places in Chicago, not only is 5 items too short, it's
forcing even more information on the map where it's not really needed.
Regarding the careful placement... let's see for example: According to Imus's
map Plymouth is north of the river, while according to National Geographic
it's south of the river. In reality the river goes through the city. If the
place is not right, what's the meaning of a "better" placement of it's label?

Regarding typography, I don't like the italic text on Imus's map - once you
have many lines in random directions around your labels, it's not trivial to
say if some 3-4-letter name containing many round letters is italic or not (is
ORD in Chicago italic?) Here it's trivial to figure out from context - when
you're trying to determine a size of some city, it's not.

Yes, I'm being negative about this map (maybe a bit too much), but apart from
art, is there really a good reason to produce maps like this anymore? I don't
agree with the angle this article takes:

> For one thing, that zooming capability means the makers of a single digital
> map are forced to design dozens of differently scaled versions. This
> severely limits how much time they can devote to perfecting the layout at
> each zoom level.

It's actually better because it can show the same information after zooming
in, but you can still read the "important" information while zoomed out.
Reading any text on this map while standing back from it must be a much harder
exercise.

> Imus argues that you can’t truly understand a place if you only use zoomed-
> in maps on teensy screens. [...] Looking at Imus’ big, richly detailed map
> offers a holistic sense of what America looks like—how cities spread out
> along rivers, forests give way to plains, and mountains zigzag next to
> valleys.

Give me an option to turn each category on and off and I'll see the relations
much better. Being able to filter out noise would give many more possibilities
of exploration than a "generic map with absolutely everything on it". If
cities and rivers are what you're interested in, many maps will provide you
exactly that information. Trying to figure it out from a map with 10 other
layers is harder.

In short, I disagree with this article trying to prove that "old-style" paper
maps can be more useful or readable than interactive, zoomable maps with
customisable layers. In my opinion those are always more useful than paper
maps. </rant> Not to discredit the work that went into this map of course. I
do appreciate this map as art and see what the author was trying to achieve. I
just disagree strongly that it's useful nowadays.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think the author is trying to say paper maps are better overall than
interactive, just that there are aspects (some of them aesthetic) that paper
maps do better, and it's good to be mindful --- not up-in-arms, just mindful
--- of what we're losing.

The only clear claim of superiority I got from this article was that large
paper maps are better at conveying the gestalt of their subject, which seems
like a straightforward enough argument. Not a novel argument; Tufte made a
cottage industry out of it.

~~~
ghshephard
I don't understand why a large paper map is better at conveying "the gestalt
of a subject" - I appreciate the work Imus did from the perspective of
craftsmanship/artwork - and, indeed, it might be a great paper map - but, I'm
guessing that 95% of the readership of HN uses digital maps for more than 90%
of the time (and, who knows, it might actually be 99% and 99%.) The fact that
your map will place your location on it, give you a reasonably decent
satellite overlay, and is zoomable to the level that you need it, and will put
_dynamic_ layers like weather, and/or traffic with _real time_ data. There is
a reason why I haven't thought of turning to a paper map in 5+ years.

It would be interesting to see where a paper map performed better than a
digital map.

~~~
paganel
> and, who knows, it might actually be 99% and 99%.

It seems like I'm part of the 1%, at least once in my adult life :) I'm
working on a personal project that involves placing medieval (East-European-
based) villages on a Google Maps mashup. In order to do this I rely on 2 paper
road-atlases of my country, one published in 2007 and the other one published
in the 1930s (I use the latter because lots of villages had their names
changed in the meantime or they had just plain disappeared).

At the beginning I did try to rely solely on Google Maps to locate those
villages, but there were many cases in which the villages' names were just
placed wrong, or they didn't show up at all (not to mention GMaps' latest bug
involving diacritics, which makes letters like "ț" or "ș" show up badly on
their maps).

Also, having a more general, zoomed-out view of the area you're interested in
is really, really useful. It gives you a better understanding of the
geographical context (are there mountains around? forests? is it a densely
populated area?), which I could never reproduce when using digital maps. Maybe
this is all caused by the fact that I'm sort of a map freak and I'm not using
maps only to get driving directions, my mother actually bought me a World
atlas when I was 5 or 6, and I've been in love with maps ever since, but then
again, this article seemed to be targeting people like me.

A little OT, that 1930s road-atlas I mentioned has a very interesting story:
as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact my country lost part of its
territory, which used to be mapped in the atlas I own. After WW2 ended and the
"friendly" Soviet Army installed a Communist government in my country, it was
not politically safe anymore to have those (now Soviet) provinces as having
been part of my country, so a kind person actually used scissors and glue and
cut out said provinces from the atlas, by very carefully following the new,
Soviet-approved border. It all kind of looks like this:
<http://imgur.com/n6c9y> and <http://imgur.com/qvcvM> .

You cannot get all that from a digital map.

~~~
apaprocki
Just curious, what is the mashup you're working on? When researching
historical places, I've often wished that Google Maps natively supported a 4th
dimension so that changes over time could be recorded. Everything from "I want
to see the businesses on this street as of 2001" to "Zoom out and see European
boundaries as of 1100".

~~~
paganel
> Just curious, what is the mashup you're working on?

Putting on the map the villages of Wallachia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallachia>), a historic Romanian province, by
order of when they were first documented in the official archives. The project
sits here: <http://sate.maglina.ro/> , it's based on Django+Solr (there's a
"Filter" menu at the top right), it's in Romanian, of course, but it's more or
less self-explanatory.

I also created a couple of (I'd say cool :) ) heatmaps based on the data,
which you can see here: <http://sate.maglina.ro/heatmaps/> , giving a general
idea where the early medieval settlements had a greater density. (for the
heatmaps I used gheat, of course, <http://code.google.com/p/gheat/> , which is
a very, very cool project).

> I've often wished that Google Maps natively supported a 4th dimension so
> that changes over time could be recorded.

I feel you on that :) But, I'll have to admit, it could turn into a very
controversial thing. For example, one of the reasons for which I started this
small project of mine is that lots of historians (Hungarians and Romanians,
mostly) have debated whether present-day Wallachia was inhabited by Romanians
continuously (as the Romanian historians insist that it happened) or if said
Romanians emigrated to Wallachia from South of the Danube somewhere around
1100-1200 or later (the Hungarians' view on the whole story). I was hoping
that by putting on a map the Wallachian villages by order of them being
officially mentioned it could clear up some things, at least for me :)

------
cjdavis
At first glance Imus' map is more accurate as well. He has the location of the
airport (CVG) south of I-275, and the location of Vandalia, OH west of I-75.
NatGeo is wrong on both.

But like moultano said, he missed Newport and Norwood.

------
brc
Maplovers should check out the Ordnance Survey maps you can get of Great
Britain.

Because there is so much less countryside to cover, the detail you can get is
quite amazing. They are a very interesting thing to peruse.

~~~
aardvark179
The OS maps are lovely, and interesting for some of the subtle detail they
include. I noticed recently (while using an OS map as a background raster for
some much more detailed data) that the roads on the 1:25000 and 1:50000 scale
maps are drawn with accurate widths derived from the more detailed survey
data.

The source data the maps are produced from is also pleasingly detailed, they
sent man to the remote part of Scotland where my dad lives to properly survey
all new houses. Openstreetmap has that sort of data for central London, but
not for anywhere like the whole country.

------
shasta
This is like a really nice, hand carved slide rule.

------
joeyh
The first closeup, of Cincinatti is an odd choice because the Imus map does
not color the river on the border blue. It was not clear to me that it showed
the river at all.

The Chicago closeup has a confusing combination of a time zone line and dotted
line. Still it is nice to have the time zone lines.

Paper maps are my favorite thing to put on the wall. My favorite right now is
a map of the Appalachian trail. A tall, very narrow map, it cuts diagonally
across the traditional map of eastern America, giving a very different
perspective.

~~~
rvanniekerk
Joey, actually the blue line on the National Geographic map doesn't depict a
river whatsoever, it's an arbitrary color for a state border.

Because the river actually IS the defining border for the state, on the Imus
map the river is highlighted in blue underneath the dark-green that depicts a
state border.

A much better design decision IMO.

~~~
joeyh
Oh, I had assumed the darker purple outer border on the Natgeo was the blue of
the river. Wow, that's bad.

------
alabut
Reminds me of a post (from a now defunkt blog) explaining the design decisions
of google maps that gives it superior readability compared to yahoo and bing:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110101023957/http://www.41latit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110101023957/http://www.41latitude.com/post/2072504768/google-
maps-label-readability)

They're fairly basic and common sense Edward Tufte tips but it's interesting
to see what a difference a collection of tiny UI tweaks make in the aggregate.

------
msisk6
The Imus maps really are fantastic. I used his Oregon map for years for
charting trips around that state.

My 2nd favorite map maker is also in Oregon: Benchmark Maps.

I just moved to Texas and haven't been able to find a map of this state that's
even close to comparable to the products of these two.

~~~
brndnhy
What do you think of Raven Maps? Their state maps are more topographic but
offer excellent detail.

<http://www.ravenmaps.com/>

~~~
msisk6
I have a laminated wall map of Oregon from Raven. It sure is pretty but a bit
lacking in details that the Imus and Benchmark State Atlases provide.

I might have to get one of the Raven maps for Texas, though. Thanks for the
reminder -- I'd totally forgotten about them!

------
jackfoxy
Really well done. One of my cherished wall adornments is a Buckminster Fuller
Dymaxion Airocean World map. I'd really like to see what Imus would do with
that projection.

------
myoder
I wish someone would have documented Imus's creation of this map. It would be
interesting to see what circumstances perplex and excite a map maker.

------
hummer
This is definitely a dying art. Wish the site (<https://imusgeographics.com/>)
is up soon.

~~~
rmc
It's a dying art in a sense, however it's never been easier to produce your
own map now, with all the neography tools and open data.

~~~
tptacek
In the sense that a map like this is the product of decades of full-time
cartography experience, experience which is inevitably going to get less and
less available as more and more of the work is automated, it seems fair to be
concerned that the art is endangered.

------
PanMan
Side note: this article is a good example why websites should Not make a touch
version. While the article looks more iPad-like in the iPad version, it also
strips out the map example images, making half of it quite pointless. And off
course switching to the desktop version of the site sends you back to the
touch version for the next page, as it detects your user agent...

------
tomjen3
Reading this, I am most shocked that there are still that many mapmakers --
the age of exploration is long past and I guessed that the few updates that
are necessary (renaming the cities and updating country borders, add a new
street here and there) was pretty much done by a couple of guys on a computer,
somewhere.

~~~
brndnhy
Retail political and topographic maps are a relatively small part of the work
load of most cartographic studios.

Forestry and petroleum exploration require constant updating and presentation
techniques.

Precipitation and drainage maps are extremely useful in agriculture.

Aviation section charts are updated quarterly.

Most vineyards, large farms, and ranches have probably had custom mapping done
at some point.

It's actually a pretty fascinating field when you appreciate the breadth of
data that is regularly correlated to maps.

------
mapster
A cartographers' response to this discussion, see:
[http://www.cartotalk.com/index.php?showtopic=7831&pid=41...](http://www.cartotalk.com/index.php?showtopic=7831&pid=41204&st=0&#entry41204)

------
icebraining
_For one thing, that zooming capability means the makers of a single digital
map are forced to design dozens of differently scaled versions._

How so? Aren't digital maps just a database of items that are rendered in real
time?

~~~
xemoka
There are a lot of different things to take into consideration when creating a
map with many scales for online usage.

Most heavily used digital maps (e.g. googles, bing, open street maps etc.) use
pre-rendered tiles. However this is besides the point, as at each scale (or
set of scales) usually a different data source is used so that a specific
amount of generalisation can be applied.

For example, a small scale map (showing a larger land area) would show not
only fewer streams than a large scale map, but would also not show every
little bend and curve; this allows for the appearance to be less muddy.
However as the user zooms in they would expect to see higher detail in stream
direction.

Often this is still something that is difficult to reproduce with an
algorithm, often being left to selecting different datasets based on scale.

------
Pelayo
The article says he used a computer to draw the map. Does anyone know what
software he used? Is it something specialized or just Photoshop? I couldn't
find it in the article.

~~~
dslamb5736
Probably several different ones. A GIS (ArcGIS, QGIS), Illustrator, Photoshop,
Avenza's products.

------
wensing
I could relate to a lot of his painstaking efforts after building the maps for
Stormpulse "by hand" albeit digitally. Hundreds of little decisions all along
the way.

------
Sukotto
His site is back up. I also took the liberty of inviting him to come talk to
us (or to do an IAMA Master Cartographer AMA on Reddit)

------
dmvaldman
I prefer this one: <http://fathom.info/allstreets/>

------
kfcm
But does the scale read "1 mile = 1 mile"?

~~~
cpeterso
This is a Steven Wright joke.

~~~
sporkologist
Hard to fold that map.

