In the discussion following Tuesday’s map making exercise, which required us to create three maps leading from Studio D to Nummit, Davidson Pizza Company, and Chipotle, a number of people mentioned how they had difficulty managing the scale of their maps. I encountered this scaling issue when I ran out of space while attempting to draw the path from Studio D to Nummit. Despite the distance between the two points amounting to only a few hundred yards and the fact that I make this walk on a daily basis, the other two maps that I drew were far more accurate. While I am clearly a terrible cartographer, I believe that my familiarity with the path from Studio D to Nummit actually hindered my ability to successfully depict the route. Because I know the route so well, I found myself trying to add every little detail to the map that I fit, and as a result, I had to drastically alter the scale on the map to fit Nummit on the page. Conversely, when drawing the other two maps, I had far better spacing and was able to fairly accurately show how to get from one place to the other. I believe this was the case as I was not as concerned with drawing every minute detail, but instead I focused more showing the route from point A to point B.
While others may not have had similar experiences drawing their maps, mine left me asking if too much information can be a detriment when constructing a map. Ultimately, this question relates to Monmonier’s article and highlights the tradeoff between accuracy and usefulness that all map makers face. I found through this exercise that the more information one tries to incorporate into a map, more difficult it becomes to use the map. On the other hand, too little information appearing on a map is potentially dangerous as the omission of an important detail could render a map completely ineffective.