Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users

I accidently purchased "Designed Maps" thinking I was getting Cynthia Brewers other book "Designing Better Maps", but I stumbled across something great. Brewer does a superb job of illustrating sound and well thought out map design to any level of GIS user. I originally purchased the book when I was taking a cartography course and it was a lifesaver. Anytime I was puzzled as to how I could best present the information at hand, I was able to flip to a similar map in "Designed Maps" in order to get a solid feel for how I could approach the problem. Brewer allows even the most casual GIS user the ability to understand the concepts presented in her examples, breaking down how each of the individual segments can be modified to highlight different cartographic aspects. "Designed Maps" also does a wonderful job of explaining how the map is intended to be used and what the user is supposed to see. I particularly enjoyed the compare and contrast segments which depicted the ways that the same information could be displayed in different manners to highlight individual components. "Designed Maps" is a must have a for a GIS library. Although the book is published by ESRI Press (it features several tips specific to ArcMap), I found it useful for understanding the specifics of cartographic representation on pretty much any platform.

I'm not very good at making maps and its because I don't know all the little tricks to making nice maps. This book helps show how to make nice readable maps. I have the other one as well but this one seems a bit more useful.

A bunch of interesting maps but the commentary is weak at best. I had hoped for expert critiques of each graphic and maybe even comments on techniques used but for the most part got dry nothingness. Could have been so much better.

A must for map makers.

great for new interns

Great idea and inspiration book

As an experienced GIS user with no formal education in geography/cartography, I found this book to be right down my alley. It's highly visual, but this is no coffee table book - the text actually explains the choices presented to mapmakers, and you get a sense for what works in which situations. Each of the six sections addresses a particular broad category of map (reference, thematic, special-purpose, etc.), and each has one map that the author has reproduced in four different styles to emphasize different features or optimize for printing. Several other example maps then follow, each with a paragraph to explain some of the techniques used in its production. The book ends with a section that shows how to recreate the effects in the book using ArcMap, which exposed me to features I didn't know existed and lots of new ideas on how to use the familiar dialogs. I would recommend this book to anyone who has a basic feel for how to use GIS software to make maps but doesn't necessarily feel the need to delve into cartographic theory.

Enjoyable collection of maps created to inform. I found the text very useful for my purposes, and an interesting way to compare various map presentation styles. This fits well with her previous book on color use on maps.

Good book. But more for idea and reference. Don't expect any details on how the maps are created and best practices. Heavy on images and very light on textual content.