Comments on: The Uncanny Valley of Color

By: sujay

sujay — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:38:33 +0000

I searched TinEye and found that this is most likely a “Montiscolor” map. You’ll find more similar if you do a Google Image Search for “montiscolor”, but somehow none of the results have a visible legend. One offers a brief caption: “The Gabelli Montiscolor World Map has a unique style that some people choose because it is quite different from all the other choices. Their term “Montiscolor” refers to a depiction of relief on both land and oceans.”

By: Daniel Huffman

Daniel Huffman — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:00:08 +0000

An excellent question. I don’t know a lot about geology, but my inclination is to say it is not — the patterns don’t seem to align to other geologic maps I can find online.

Moreover, if it is indeed a geologic map, they should probably indicate that somewhere on the map and provide a key to the colors.

By: Melanna

Melanna — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:30:48 +0000

Is it possible that this is a geologic map?

By: The Uncanny Valley of Color | myninjaplease

The Uncanny Valley of Color | myninjaplease — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:15:13 +0000

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By: Jens

Jens — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:19:17 +0000

Even some European places are a little off the real locations. The most obvious mistake, the city of Hanover. The map puts it adjacent to the river Weser. Hanover should have been placed in the “E” of Germany. Essen is placed roughly, next to the city of Münster. Düsseldorf is placed at the location of Wesel. Leipzig lies directly adjacent to the River Elbe.

By: David Medeiros

David Medeiros — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:48:13 +0000

For a good example of the right way to mix an elevation color scheme with a climatic one see Tom Patterson’s World Relief Map with Cross Blended Hypsometric tints: http://www.shadedrelief.com/world_relief/home.html.

By: fergal

fergal — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:40:59 +0000

There is also some language confusion in labelling…
All labels seem to be in english but there is some exceptions.

Atlantic French islands (Île d’Oléron, Île de Ré, Belle-Île, etc.) are in french (except they forgot the ‘^’). But following this idea, Corsica should be labelled Corse…

By: Daniel Huffman

Daniel Huffman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:43:42 +0000

You do usually see separate physical and political maps, but there’s really nothing stopping them from being combined, if you can design in such a way that you do a decent job on each part. Certainly, it’s more efficient, though probably not as thorough as doing them separately.

I would say there’s not an overriding feeling among cartographers about it. Like anything, we’d just view it as putting more data onto a map — if you can add data in a way that is clear and useful, then go for it. Actually, most cartographers will never make a map like this. There’s not a lot of competition in the market for world reference maps, so there are just a few places, like NatGeo, that put in the time and effort to make them.

By: msb

msb — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:07:39 +0000

I think I’ll be spending quite some time trying to figure out the color scheme…

(assuming there was any actual color selection going on) I’m currently leaning toward a multi-axial or layered color selection process: elevation, climate, land smoothness, general opinion.

General opinion establishes the primary starting color scheme. So the rockies, alps, chile, himalayas would start out focused on elevation (high) (see norway vs finland); The sahara, most of africa and mediterranean on climate (arid); central america & mexico on climate (hot); brazil, indus valley, congo & eastern US on vegetation; norway & siberia on climate (cold); etc. Then, that color scheme is either scaled based on intensity (e.g. elevation -> more purple) or modified by some other general opinion characteristic (e.g. cold but mountainous vs elevated but generally arid – leading to the difference in Alaska vs Tibet; brazil’s interior is modified by elevation & climate; siberia is modified by elevation)

I still have a hard time figuring out the scheme for the central plains of north america, why far northern canada is green, why new zealand is a continuation of australia, why the hudson bay area is yellow-brown…

By: Tina

Tina — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:41:01 +0000

I didn’t notice the floating A in France, but I did notice that Liechtenstein doesn’t even get a full label. It’s now known simply as “Liech.” And that it seems like all the city/country labels for the smaller European nations are logically reversed in size.

I do like the contouring, though. It made me want to touch the map.