[OSM-talk] British Cartographic Society - Better Mapping Seminars

[Nick Burch]

Hi All

As mentioned on the list a little while ago, the British Cartographic 
Society are currently running a seminar (touring around the country) on 
better mapping - <http://www.cartography.org.uk/Pages/Latest/Better_1.html>

I attended the London one last week, and found it really interesting. 
There's another one tomorrow (probably a bit late notice), but there's 
also one in Liverpool on the 23rd, and Edinburgh on the 30th, so plenty of 
time to register for those.


I'd say that anyone interested in writing and OSM rendering program should 
try to go to one of these. Also, anyone who wants to take OSM rendered 
output and turn it into something pretty should also try to go, as you'll 
get a lot from it. (If you just enjoy drawing lines between where you 
went, and don't care how they look, you probably won't get much from it)


I've written up my notes from the event on the wiki at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Better_Mapping_Seminar, but the 
quick conclusions are:

* Use colour sensibly. Don't make everything the same colour, and don't
    re-use colours for different things (eg motorways and rivers)
* When reducing, remove features. Otherwise you end up with a very
    accurate, but totally unreadable map
* When enlarging, errors and changes that were hidden will probably show
    up, so where possible find a more accurate data source
* can't just haul everything out of a GIS and display it. Need to figure
    out what's important, then colour and highlight that so it stands out
* what is right for one situation is probably wrong for another. Will need
    to customise the map for the intended audience
* your GIS should hold everything, but your map should be filtered to only
    have the things it needs
* decide on the primary message of your map, and any secondary messages.
    then make sure that your map shows those clearly

If you can't make it to one of them, but are interested in rendering, or 
tweaking rendered output, it's certainly worth reading through the wiki 
page. Most of the speakers really seemed to know their stuff.

Nick