Freegeographytools.com Website Review

been a long field season this year, which has kept me away from this site. not over yet – still have one more session left, running through the end of next week. then i’ll be back home, and hope to get this site cranking again soon.. making maps: a visual guide to map design for gis – a review of the second edition. so i mentioned to a friend that i had just received a review copy of the new second edition of making maps by john krygier and denis wood book!”. no surprise – since its publication in 2006, the first edition has a become a staple on many mapmakers’ bookshelves, and i expect the second edition will “suffer” a similar fate. if you make maps, you’d be well-advised to have some version of this title one thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t really a how-to guide, or a cookbook on how to create maps. krygier and wood look more at the rationale you should use in making basic design decisions for your map and how to put it all together, and less so at how all the pieces fit together at the end (though that’s not entirely ignored). examples abound, but usually look at the individual pieces of a map (color, typeface, symbology, clas*ification, projection, etc.) rather than the whole. think of this as the mapping equivalent of mcgee’s kitchen it will give you the information and understanding needed to figure out why a recipe works, but doesn’t actually give you any recipes to follow. for examples of good mapmaking practices, you might consider brewer’s designed maps: a sourcebook for gis users is very good, albeit crazily over-priced. but making maps is the book i’d consult first for guidance and inspiration. one point to keep in mind is the book’s design; it’s very visually-oriented, and the layout on most pages isn’t what i would call linear. this makes it a poor choice for a reference title, but that’s not really its intent. the design forces you to go through entire sections to pick up their meaning, and i’m pretty sure that was the authors’ intent. they don’t want you to pick up just a