A tourist map of Xi’an: combining historical city characteristics with art

Abstract

The design of tourist maps of historical cities sometimes fails to balance functionality and artistry or does not fully reflect cities' cultural connotations. In this paper, we select Xi'an, China, as a study case and design a tourist map through a spatial narrative to reflect its artistic characteristics in the layout design, color design and symbol design. A few operational suggestions are proposed for improving functionality and artistry in tourist mapping, including variable scales, topological optimization, hand-painted symbols and colors extracted from the architecture of the city.

Summary of activities 2020

“…It is neither the best academic paper nor the best-designed map, but a combination of qualities from both areas that is judged the winner. The following 10 maps were reviewed for the award: It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the award of the 2020 'Best Map' to Min Weng, Xiaoyan Song, Lingqi Wang, Huan Xie, Ping Zhang, Shiliang Su & Mengjun Kang (Wuhan University) for their paper detailing methods that seek to improve both the functionality and artistry of tourist maps, using Xi'an as a case study (Weng et al, 2020). The map presented in this paper specifically targeted the use of variable scales, topological optimisation, hand-painted symbols and colour based upon the architecture of the city to develop a new product.…”

Map Design for Public Health Emergencies: a Novel Conceptual Framework for Thematic Content Selection

“…The thematic content displays many differences at each spatiotemporal scale and narrative aspect. Setting appropriate schemes of color, symbol, and layout helps to characterize the objects corresponding to the thematic content of different levels (Weng et al 2020).…”

Integrated Sustainable Development of Culture into Tourist Map Design: A Case from Foshan, China

“…Therefore, this study attempts to integrate the sustainable development of culture into tourist map design from an interdisciplinary perspective. So far, only a few studies have explored the translation and representation of individual aspects of a regional culture and its informational elements on tourist maps to date [ 14 , 15 ], and little attention has been paid to design strategies for presenting regional cultural elements, scientifically and systematically, in tourist maps [ 16 ]. Some scholars have pointed out that promoting cultural cognition of tourist destinations ensures higher subjective satisfaction for tourists [ 17 , 18 , 19 ].…”

“…Since the reform and opening up in China, historical cities have gradually become important destinations for domestic and foreign tourists because of their rich cultural heritage and their function of preserving the customs, memories, and identity of communities [ 20 ]. However, due to the lack of full use of their own cultural characteristics, some historical cities have caused the problem of “homogenization” on tourist maps in the process of urban image transmission, which may have a negative impact on tourists’ understanding of local culture and the planning of tourism routes through the maps [ 16 , 21 ]. Therefore, we can improve the design of tourist maps to better present the native culture and to promote visitors’ culture cognition.…”

“…However, within the scope of the relationship between tourism and culture, cultural resources are the foundation and have become an important force in attracting domestic and foreign tourists to their destinations [ 24 ]. Therefore, some scholars have proposed that the design of tourist maps should not only take into account the scientific and artistic aspects, but also fully consider the presentation of culture in the tourist map [ 16 ]. However, a historical city’s regional culture can be divided into multiple categories.…”