Mapping Student Futures in Cartography By Genevieve Shiffrar April 21, 2003

Cartography Lab intern Chad Johnson working on a map of Chiapas, Mexico

It can be said that humans have been engaged in cartography for as long as we have been making images. Of course, the art of map making has transformed many times over since those initial drawings. These days, computers help us describe visually the world's features. The Department of Geography at UC Berkeley plays a role in this history.

This L&S department was probably the first to teach the present modern methods of cartography. It began using Macintosh computers for its cartography lab in 1988 in order to teach ways to create high-quality free-form graphic maps. The trick, says computing facility manager Donald Bain, was making a map with a computer that didn't look as if it was a map made with a computer. Bain developed tutorials for these techniques which have been adapted widely by other institutions in their cartography curricula.

Today, Berkeley continues to teach state-of-the-art cartography techniques to eager students.

Housed in a well-lit room that once was filled with drafting tables, the Cartography Lab now contains computers, scanners, printers, and video projectors. Maps line the walls. One is a small faded street map of downtown Oakland, an original copy of the first commercially produced map created with the now-standard computer graphics techniques. Another is a map drawn with a projection invented by Tim Norris, one of the student cartographers, referred to as the Nietschmann-Norris projection. It emphasizes tropical oceans to map the location of coral reefs. Below it is a breathtakingly beautiful full-color five-foot long collage illustrating the flora and fauna of coral reefs. The late Professor Bernard Nietschmann and a team of student cartographers produced the map and collage over a four-year period for National Geographic Magazine.

Instructor Darin Jensen and student maps produced last year.

Instructor Darin Jensen emphasizes that the Geography Department's primary cartography course, Cartographic Representation, is rather unique. While 4-unit courses are notoriously labor intensive, this one is especially so. Jensen screens prospective students so that they realize the amount of work that will be asked of them.

The course is run as if it is a cartography firm. To be true to this vision, student projects are not graded. Rather, the assignments are edited repeatedly. This means students must work on a variety of projects simultaneously. Given that there are eight computer assignments, three cognitive mapping assignments, one library assignment, two book chapter reports, a midterm exam, and a final project, students learn quickly to juggle competing priorities for the class.

Humbly billed as "an introduction to cartographic methods, design, interpretation and history," the course offers much more than an introduction. It provides students with nearly comprehensive professional cartographic training by term's end. Some graduates find freelance jobs as cartographers for prestigious book publishers, especially academic presses such as UC Press, Duke University Press, and Cornell University Press.

The maps these students produce help make sense of the world in which we live. Disabled Access at UC Berkeley's Botanical Garden; American Tourism Dollars in Europe; Urban Homicide in Oakland; Global Slavery; and Philippine Gold Mining—a sample of final projects for this year's Cartographic Representation class is a testament to the power of maps created in the Geography Department's Cartography Lab.