ABSTRACT

As maps become more common and popular in the media to illustrate large social and environmental problems such as climate change, cartographers who are given this task are searching for ways to present information to persuade readers to care and take action. Research has shown that simply presenting facts is often not enough for someone to take action to solve these types of socio-environmental problems; information must not only be presented accurately but also must connect with readers’ emotions. Indeed, cartographers have increasingly been interested in understanding not just the cognitive implications of map design but also both the persuasive nature of and affective responses to map design. Here I present the term vividness, a term used in other communication domains to describe content which attracts attention, evokes emotion, and makes distant topics proximate to readers. While this term is new to the cartographic realm it provides a framework by which to evaluate maps for their persuasiveness based in both cognitive map design research conducted since the middle of the last century and newer research in cartography on maps and emotion. Through semi-structured interviews with experts I illustrate how cartographers create persuasive maps that align with the definition of vividness and I argue that vividness is composed of the following elements in maps: (1) visual salience, (2) visible change over time, (3) congruent colour use, (4) projection choice, (5) symbolization, (6) legend design, (7) layout, and (8) novel designs.

摘要

随着地图在媒体中越来越普遍和流行，以说明诸如气候变化等重大社会和环境问题，被赋予这项任务的制图师正在寻找提供信息的方法，以说服读者关心并采取行动。研究表明，仅仅提出事实往往不足以让人们采取行动解决这些类型的社会环境问题；信息不仅要准确呈现，而且要与读者的情感联系起来。事实上，制图师越来越有兴趣了解地图设计的认知含义，以及地图设计的说服力和情感反应。在这里，我提出了“生动”一词，一个用于其他通信领域的术语，用于描述吸引注意力、唤起情感并使遥远的主题接近读者的内容。虽然这个术语对制图领域来说是新的，但它提供了一个框架，用于评估地图的说服力，基于自上世纪中叶以来进行的认知地图设计研究和地图和情感制图的新研究。通过与专家的半结构化访谈，我说明了制图师如何创建符合生动性定义的有说服力的地图，我认为生动性由地图中的以下元素组成：（1）视觉显着性，（2）随时间的可见变化，（ 3) 一致的颜色使用，(4) 投影选择，(5) 符号化，(6) 图例设计，(7) 布局，以及 (8) 新颖的设计。