Cartographie dans les médias / Cartography in the media

Chapitre 6. Some Comments on Mapmaking in Newsweek Magazine / Notes sur la cartographie dans le Newsweek Magazine

SOME COMMENTS ON MAPMAKING IN NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE Notes sur la cartographie dans le Newsweek Magazine Ib OHLSSON Newsweek Magazine / New York, N.Y. / U.S.A. ABSTRACT This is a short text about the methods used by Newsweek’s art department to draw maps for the magazine. Some examples are presented and annotated. RÉSUME Ce texte montre les méthodes utilisées par le département d’art graphique de Newsweek pour concevoir les cartes du magazine. Quelques exemples de cartes sont alors présentés et commentés. INTRODUCTION The following text presents 11 different ways of producing journalistic maps. Most of the maps shown here were printed in color and somewhat larger. LOCATOR MAPS Newsweek prints about 65-80 maps a year. Most of them are simple locator maps that show places mentioned in the articles they accompany. We rarely produce full page maps ; « A guide to Springfield » (fig. 1) was specially drawn for the magazine’s 50th anniversary issue. Regular locators usually run to no more than one column, but are often « shaped » for graphic effect (fig. 2). Other maps are large enough to carry information that amplify the story they illustrate while being the main or only graphic on the page. The example of the North Pole map is as close as we ever get, at Newsweek, to straight cartography (fig. 3). Since it is our job to get the news ‘up front’, showing what happened is as important for the mapmaker as showing where ; still, the map often accounts for 50 % of a given piece of art ; « Le grand fric frac » required a city street map which was as important in the overall context of the graphic as was the drawing of the building (fig. 4). Sometimes the actual map, the locator map, plays second fiddle to a larger map that has been turned into a three dimensional drawing. If done right, we then have the accuracy of a map and the drama of a drawing in one illustration which remains a map (fig. 5 : « Trail of a kamikaze »). There seem to be very few cartographers working in journalism. Most mapmakers have graphic arts backgrounds and are therefore not bound by cartographic traditions. So, they turn out decorative graphics masquerading as maps. That is accepted at Newsweek as long as the news is the maps’ information, features and structural entity are correct (fig. 6 : « A land of plenty »). Now and again such maps may tilt too far toward the decorative (fig. 7 : « Big and getting bigger »). IIINFORMATIVE GRAPHICS Some of the things we call maps may not be cartography in the ordinary sense of the word but as informative graphics they still guide the reader through unknown places ; as did the graphic of « The visitors from space » (fig. 8). The mapmaker in journalism is always up against deadlines and tight spaces. One learns to live with the first and squeeze into the second. In "How a rapid deployment would work" the map’s grid (though not shown) was bent into an acute perspective at its northern end, thereby allowing a great deal of geography into a given space (fig. 9). If rules are bent, it is in order to fit particular page layout demands. In the end the result must, of course, be believable. 65 71 IIISKETCHES How do we get from the editor’s request for a particular piece of graphic to the printed result ? First : rough blocking out of space needed for requested elements (fig.10a) ; second : sketch presenting map in detail as three dimensional map-drawing with a few color indications as well as rough copy explaining the action in drawing ; (the artist writes copy at this point, at least at Newsweek). Even the least visually inclined editor can evaluate a sketch that is spelled out. If the first rough is esssentially right there will be little change in the composition of the final art (fig. 10b). IVTHE MAPMAKER IN JOURNALISM From time to time the designer will present the editor(s) with graphic solutions to a particular request for a map that the editor is unwilling to accept. Such a...