| dc.description.abstract | Today's heavily automated cartographic production calls for the need to ask the question: How does one combine objectivity, empirics, science, and aesthetics into design decisions to create a map product with a distinct aesthetic style? To address this issue, I will investigate the development of aesthetic styles in cartographic history and define specific cartographic styles based on technological eras. Since cartographic production and design is dependent on available technologies, as are the technical skills and media choices, technological change is a logical starting point for identifying and articulating unique cartographic styles and their respective, broader cartographic style eras. Defining these styles allows for an easier explanation and education of the aesthetics side of Cartography, which is the ultimate goal for this thesis: to provide a broad reference point of several older aesthetic styles for cartographers to use in conjunction with already existing graphical principles to produce an overall, cohesive style. Three printing technologies are reviewed, which commonly are imitated to produce an antique style: woodblock, copperplate, and lithograph. These three technologies were the most widespread geographically and well-known cartographic production techniques historically, allowing for more sampling options and examples of maps. Specifically, this research approaches the following questions:
1. Were the general aesthetic styles of maps produced within the different printing technologies dissimilar enough to say that styles were dependent on the technology?
2. If aesthetic styles were dependent on technology, what are the notable aesthetic elements that combine to define these styles?
This research will not only contribute to academic and applied Cartography, but also the cartographic community in general because currently no broadly defined design styles exist in Cartography. Additionally, with the artistic and aesthetic history that exists within the cartographic field, it is a topic that should be researched for enriching the cartographic annals and history books, and also is a subject that hopefully will receive more attention in the future. Most of all, this research hopes to begin to make up for the lack of cartographic design aesthetic reference points within the formal education of Cartography as a discipline. | en |
