Sunday, January 17, 2010

Bad Map example: from a Google search for images of Durham, NC

This is my Bad Map example: a map that is intended to focus on Durham, NC. I don't think it is absolutely terrible, but it is a mediocre map. You can tell that there are towns here, but it's hard to decipher some of the names. There are roads, and some of them are numbered, but some are not and without numbers they are impossible to identify (without a better map). County boundaries are shown, but they could just as easily be roads - there's nothing to say they're not, and they're about the same thickness as the roads, and some of them are just as crooked and bendy. There is no scale. There's no legend to distinguish freeways from smaller roads from county boundaries. There's a red pin head in the middle, probably to tell us that Durham is Right There - but it's still hard to tell that the focus of the map is Durham, even if one could read the word. And but how do you get there? It's Spaghetti Junction with a few towns thrown in for good measure. This is the sort of map that makes me think good cartographers are badly needed!

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