What's in a name?

Some interesting maps have been doing the rounds recently using names as a proportional, locative symbol. This is work I've been involved in over the last few years with our map of Irish surnames but James Cheshire at UCL has done a great job with his typographic map of US surnames. The map will be published in a forthcoming National Geographic. James has also done a similar map exploring London's surnames . This work is well worth a look and illustrates how applying some simple cartographic design can create an interesting, informative and attention-grabbing map.

Reaching out to Schools

After some fantastic comments from the participants that came to the workshop in 2010, the BCS are running the Schools Workshop on the Wednesday morning of the next BCS Symposium in June for Year 10 students.

Restless Earth - Mapping Natural Disasters - FREE Workshop for Year 10 Students on Wednesday 8th June 2011
For more info and to apply for places : http://www.cartography.org.uk/schools
Parkside School attended in 2010 - see their write up here

With mapping becoming a part of everyday life, we should be encouraging the next generation to use it in more useful ways and showing them how beneficial such resources can be. The 2010 workshop focussed on the Haiti Earthquake Disaster and unfortunately with more flooding, and extreme weather events occurring all over the world then these natural disasters require more and more resources and sometimes in even more remote locations.
Check out this link and pan around  to see how comparison between past and present imagery is being used to see the devastating effect of the Queensland floods http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.472769,153.001559&z=21&t=k&nmd=20110113

What's it all about?

Hi,
We've set this blog up to give a voice to society members who want to share things about maps in an informal manner.
The views here are not those of the Society but as we are all members then they're views of the members of the society instead.
For interesting things about maps and map-making please see the list of map related blogs below or The BCS website http://www.cartography.org.uk/

Enjoy.