We’re just a couple of weeks away from the 30 Day Map Challenge, an annual celebration of cartographic creativity. I know some of you are already brainstorming about what you might do this year. Each day has a prompt, and you’re encouraged to make a map that day that is based on the prompt. Here’s the 2023 list from the website:
Day 4’s prompt is “A bad map.” This was also a prompt last year, for Day 10. And while that can be a fun idea, I want to urge people to approach this prompt responsibly. Because it can be easy to produce something for this challenge that can accidentally make others feel terrible.
Last year, some people answered the challenge by producing maps that were full of the sorts of choices that we are ordinarily advised to stay away from: rainbow colors, maligned typefaces like Papyrus or Comic Sans, and projections that were ill-fitted to the map subject. It’s fun to play with those things that you’re not supposed to do! But, these are also same kinds of choices that might be made by someone who’s new to our community, and who isn’t as experienced. I’ve seen plenty of students who start out their careers by producing work that is very similar to the material that my colleagues produced when they were prompted to make “a bad map.”
Imagine, then, being one of those novices and seeing someone out there make something in the same style as you, and then see people laugh at it. Might you learn a useful lesson about design? Maybe. But there’s a kinder and more effective way to teach the next generation, isn’t there?
I know it’s not really about them. It’s about all of us letting go of the constraints that we operate under and being intentionally ridiculous. And I understand how that can be fun. But I just ask you all to think carefully about who might be unintentionally mocked by that. Because there are other fun ways to approach this challenge.
“A bad map” is a prompt that can cause us to think about what makes something a map in the first place, for example. Last year I made this:
Heavily inspired by my love of the Surrealist painter René Magritte, this map pushes back against interpretation. It keeps trying to tell you it’s not a map, but instead just some colored pixels that form interesting shapes.
This piece, by Jules Grandin, is also great. It shows airports in the 16th century. It’s not trying to be poorly constructed, just humorously useless:
It’s no secret that I think our community has had a history of toxic critique and gatekeeping. I’ve written about it here, and talked about it at NACIS. This year, when prompted to make “a bad map,” I invite you to think of “bad” in more ways than just “what a beginner would make.”
somethingaboutmaps 
Interesting concluding remarks about gatekeeping and toxicity. Impressions from attending NACIS this year will most likely keep me from attending another and I find that incredibly disappointing. That said, my experience sounds like it’s not unique from the feedback I received in Pittsburgh (and echoed above), which is both reassuring as well as a shame.
William A. Wetherholt, Ph.D.
Advisor, Gamma Theta Upsilon
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
Frostburg State University
Pronouns: he, him, his
[cid:3510eb2e-685f-40bc-8a13-0be25ca6bb48]
(Duplicating this comment because I think I accidentally replied to the whole blog post, not to you)
I’m so sorry you had a poor time! I would be interested to know more about your experiences, if you’d be willing to share, either here or privately by email. I’m not here to convince you to re-engage with NACIS, but I’d certainly like to be able to use your experiences to try and help find ways to make things better for others in the future. If you’d prefer not to get into it, though, I understand.
Daniel, very interesting to read this(especially the last paragraph) as a simple “map lover” who is absolutely naive about any mapmakers’ tensions/dramas/missteps in relating to new practitioners. I adore the Atlas of Design series and your spotlighting of interesting maps from near and far. And I do appreciate the artistry that so many bring to the field, and to the related field of artistic topographic representations (eg Eric Knight, https://www.ericknightmaps.com/panoramas). This post helps me appreciate the challenges of those putting their creativity out there for public and peer responses.
Most all the tension and drama is unintentionally created, and not always apparent from the surface. It’s just a side-effect of natural human tendencies. Maybe we see a map out there in the wild, and we find some of its errors or choices funny. And then we share it around, because we simply want to share some humor, or an object lesson, and then we end up discouraging someone. It’s easy to fall into, and I’ve certainly done it myself. I just want to encourage people to think a bit more carefully. We can lift each other up and teach, without shutting down people from receiving our input because it was done in a hurtful manner.
I looked up “bad” (https://www.etymonline.com)
c. 1300, “inadequate, unsatisfactory, worthless; unfortunate;” late 14c., “wicked, evil, vicious; counterfeit;”
Eight Variations of Bad. Examples of each? I’m thinking on it.
1) Inadequate maps
2) Unsatisfactory maps
3) Worthless maps
4) Unfortunate maps
5) Wicked maps
6) Evil maps
7) Vicious maps
8) Counterfeit maps
But also: “ugly,” “defective,” “weak,” “faithless,” “impudent,” “crooked,” “filthy” (such as Greek kakos, probably from the word for “excrement;” Russian plochoj, related to Old Church Slavonic plachu “wavering, timid;” Persian gast, Old Persian gasta-, related to gand “stench;” German schlecht, originally “level, straight, smooth,” whence “simple, ordinary,” then “bad”
A few more selected bad map types to hunt down:
9) Impudent maps
10) Filthy maps
11) Timid maps
12) Smelly (stench) Maps
That’s a lot of bad maps.
Definitely some adjectives here that I would be curious to see. I have trouble imagining an “impudent map.” But it sounds like you might have enough for an entire Bad Maps Challenge.
This is so on point. In my Cartography courses, I always include a section in my “What Is Cartography?” lecture on what is a “bad map.” The definition I have come to is that a bad map is one that fails to accomplish its goals. I give graphic examples such as an election map printed in the Wall Street Journal in 2012 in black and white so the colors are indistinguishable, a “Bad Intersections” web map that is too cluttered to read, and the ever-popular Fox News blunder, a map of the Middle East that labels Iraq “Egypt”. Some might find two shortcomings in this definition: 1) It leaves out any artistic or aesthetic sensibility, and 2) it paradoxically prevents anyone from INTENTIONALLY creating a bad map, thus making the Map Challenge “bad map” prompt impossible (if your goal is to make a bad map, and you make a bad map, you have accomplished the goal, which makes it not a bad map). Thus, perhaps it is more useful to inversely define a GOOD map as one that DOES accomplish its goals–which may be related to communication, persuasion, aesthetics, etc.
It’s a good concept to steer learners toward, and effectiveness is a way of thinking about things that I haven’t really been tuned into until recent years. Our community definitely tends to conflate “good” with “pretty.” Amber Bosse has often pointed out that the Atlas of Design tends to reinforce that impression. But there’s a lot of good, effective mapping out that impacts peoples’ lives that doesn’t necessarily stick to “cartographic standards.”