Cartographic Design as Visual Storytelling: Synthesis and Review of Map-Based Narratives, Genres, and Tropes

Abstract

In this article, I review considerations and techniques for approaching cartographic design as visual storytelling. Stories, like maps, are a method for documenting and explaining, for meaningfully abstracting our experiences, for communicating and sharing, and for asserting a particular worldview. I argue that visual storytelling offers an entry point for hybridization in cartography, uniting technology with praxis, product with process, and design with critique while opening rich new avenues for transdisciplinary research and design. I begin by introducing influences on map-based visual storytelling and review ten recurring themes that make visual storytelling different from traditional perspectives on cartographic design. I then offer three of potentially many ways to articulate and organize the design space for mapbased visual storytelling: foundational narrative elements and their adaptation to geographic phenomena and processes, visual storytelling genres delineating different story experiences, and visual storytelling tropes used to advance narratives across text, maps, images, and other multimedia. I conclude with a call for future research on visual storytelling in cartography, including visual design, visual ethics, and visual literacy.

Cartographic Design of Cultural Maps

“…Cultural street maps are developed using a map-based visual storytelling conceptual framework [11], and are publicly accessible (http:// social-dynamics.net/streetonomics). They are organized into a spatial narrative (plotline) and utilize tropes to introduce the story.…”

“…Finally, the historical period layer utilizes a multi-hue sequential color scheme to map the oldest streets in yellow and the newest ones in blue tones. 4) In spatial narratives, both places and people can be treated as story characters [11], and that allows users to see that each street represents a unique historical persona. Therefore, each time a user selects a street, a styled map pop-up is displayed.…”

A Multi-perspective Narrative-Based Geovisualization Dashboard for the 2020 US Presidential Election

“…Maps with narrative elements developed in the early stage were mainly based on the compilation of static thematic maps and atlases (Wood 1987 ; Segel and Heer 2010 ; Fish 2020 ). One notable advantage of static maps is that users are familiar with them given their traditional use in print (Roth 2021 ). However, static maps are considered to have relatively limited content capacity and expression methods, and they do not work well for small-screen mobile devices (Ricker and Roth 2018 ).…”

Characterizing Storytelling in COVID-19 Cartographic Journalism

“…Maps are one such medium. While maps have always been rooted in narratives and storytelling, only recently have cartography and related fields focused significant attention and room in their research agendas to the intersections of maps and stories [2]. Stories that not only include a map, but are driven by the map and other visuals are defined as story maps.…”