Choosing colors for maps, charts, and infographics can be a difficult task. Standard software packages like Excel and Matlab have tended to offer substandard color schemes (though this is getting better) so it’s up to the designer to learn about color and apply the appropriate techniques. This post will focus on understanding color schemes for maps.
A few quick notes regarding the latest release of Cartographer.js. Cartographer has an official Twitter channel. Follow @cartographerjs for updates. The latest version has full support for Internet Explorer (tested in IE 6+). The latest version also sports substantial speed improvements and should be easier to extend in the future.
Cartographer.js is a thematic mapping library for Google Maps that simplifies the development process and provides instant access to proven visualization techniques. Developers are freed from worrying about how to tweak the Google Maps API to build the thematic elements they need, and can focus on more important problems like data collection and normalization. Cartographer.js supports custom styling so it can integrate seamlessly into existing web applications.
It is intuitive that when you have a short distance to travel it is always faster to walk than wait around for a bus. But exactly how long should you wait? We decided to do some calculations to find out. Click here to see Walk or Bus?
The Ebstorf mappamundi was drawn in 13th century Saxony and depicts the Christian worldview within the body of a crucified Christ. The map illustrates both the “known world” as well as significant landmarks and points of interest for the curious pilgrim.
“Markets are People” is a beautifully drawn map. It uses area-distortion to show population at both the state and city level. This is the first map we have seen that uses the area-distortion method at two resolutions. The effect is visually accurate, highly readable, and offers deeper insight into the data than similar maps that offer only one level of detail.
We recently needed to sort the pixels in an image by their color. On first attempt, we sorted by simple RGB values: first sort on R, then on G, then B. But it turns out there are many other possibilities for sorting colors. Every permutation of the RGB letters could be considered (RBG, GBR, GRB, [...]
We recently encountered (via infosthetics) a paper from Danny Holten and Jarke J. van Wijk that demonstrates an algorithm for creating beautiful graph visualizations. The original paper is Force-Directed Edge Bundling for Graph Visualization, published in 2009. In computer science theory, a graph is a collection of nodes and the edges between them. Graphs are [...]
Visualizations show relative pitch strength across the duration of the song. Colors scheme is derived from the Kid A album cover. Song analysis by Echo Nest via the Echo Nest Remix toolkit. Rendering was done with PyCairo.
A tool to map your Twitter followers. Tweemap shows up to 10,000 followers for any given user. The Google Maps Javascript API provides core mapping utilities, and the Twittervision API was used for geocoding.