Come on Don!
My second rule of Beer Leg posting (can't remember the first) as you may recall, is "Never argue with Kent McMillan; he never gives up and he's usually right."
What can I say?
I'm defeated.
But, hey, at least it was a TKO; I was consious when I left the ring.
Don
Come on Don!
Beauty enhances Beauty
> So, at what point did you start putting pictures of women (presumably scantily clad) on your maps and do you have to add a call-out with a leader arrow so that the user of your map realizes that's a real pearl necklace, not some fake pearl necklace?
It was a simple analogy Kent, can you try to keep up?
Why wouldn't I want to make my pretty map a bit more beautiful?
Te average client hasn't a clue as to what is on the survey drawing, why not try to make as appealing as possible, they might think that they are getting their money's worth.
After all, I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig....:snarky:
Dugger
Beauty enhances Beauty
> Why wouldn't I want to make my pretty map a bit more beautiful?
>
> Te average client hasn't a clue as to what is on the survey drawing, why not try to make as appealing as possible, they might think that they are getting their money's worth.
So, it sounds as if you've just given up on trying to make a map communicate to a client and are just shooting for pretty? That's exactly my point. The more effort that is spent on prettifying things, the less goes into substance.
"Due Texas"
> James - although Kent is trying to foist the blame of North Arrow hypnotism and paralysis on a somewhat muddled and easily confused citizenry, I think the true reason for his north arrow phobia is rooted in his Texanness.
No, the Bulwer-Lytton School of Cartography does have its graduates in Texas. I just think it's more natural that they would find jobs in PLSSia where the basic map is just a simple little thing that hardly looks as if it ought to cost money, let along thousands of dollars. "It was a dark and stormy North Arrow" is a natural addition in that situation to try to distract the user of the map from its actual content.
"Due Texas"
I don’t believe the B-L grads would be able to hold a candle to the training that is mandatory for all surveyors and drafters in public land states. The following is a clip from the advanced “North Arrow Embellishment” class I took this fall. The instructor used this footage to inspire students to construct the most fripperous north arrows possible, the point being to strive to ink up arrows that will have the following effect on all sentient beings, even Texans:
[flash width=420 height=315] http://www.youtube.com/v/OEMcDeEJ850?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0 [/flash]
Crawling back into the ring
Bloody, but determined ("unbowed" seemed too dramatic).
" The more effort that is spent on prettifying things, the less goes into substance."
If that's your point, it's a poor one.
Pretty and substantial are not mutually exclusive.
You know that, but can't admit it at this point of the discussion, and probably shouldn't.
You have too much invested in this foolishness to give up now.
It's just fun.
🙂
Don
Beauty enhances Beauty
Not so.
In todays world of CAD the north arrow will usually be a block, and the time spent inserting a pretty block, or a plain block is the same.
Beauty enhances Beauty
> In todays world of CAD the north arrow will usually be a block, and the time spent inserting a pretty block, or a plain block is the same.
Yes, but if the point is to produce a pretty map without expending much thought or effort on making it communicative, the elaborately decorative North Arrow is merely a trick or a gimmick. That's the dark side of CAD, a draftsman can produce maps that appear to be survey maps with little effort and, if ultimately the focus is on producing a pretty map, that will be sufficient.
On the other hand, if you just forget about the Bulwer-Lytton School of Cartography and revisit the problem from the standpoint of communication (without relying upon the jazzy decorations to slide past that issue) you are actually engaging the problem in my view.
It would probably be relatively easy to measure the quality of a map based entirely upon eye movement of a first-time viewer. The eye that lingers, fixated on some scale bar with Heidi Klum astride it or with GPS satellits orbiting all around it, is an easy way to show that a map is a failure at anything other than flim-flam artistry.
Crawling back into the ring
> Pretty and substantial are not mutually exclusive.
Actually, they are, if by "pretty" you mean decorated. The prose analogy is very good. Suppose the thought you are meaning to communicate is "I found all of the boundary monuments in place, conforming to those described in the original grant".
Under the theory that prettier is better, that might well become "The sky had clouds that put me in mind of another day when the smell of cordite caught my nostrils and kicked around inside them, but then there was the shovel. The shovel bit the ground and it bit back. Hard. It was frozen, so I built a campfire to thaw it out a bit and while I was laying under a nearby tree waiting for the fire to do its work, I thought about my last conversation with Heidi Klum on a somewhat similar day at a small chalet in Switzerland where I was attending a seminar on the drawing of decorative North Arrows".
Crawling back into the ring
I...
can't...
continue...
Must take sustenance ...
Must sleep...
Pretty is not good.
I know that now...
Don
North Arrow red herrings
>
> Then a construction contractor told me of an old trick he would use to distract his local lackadaisical and cluesless inspector; he would take a claw hammer and smack one of the exposed studs nearest the entrance, the inspector would immediatley find something to write up, and satisfied that he did his duty, be on his merry way.
>
> I had one boss who was "cosmeti-phile", so I'd put on a north arrow I know he did not like, and sometimes his comments would be limited to that. Fait acompli.
It's done all the time. Stick a manhole in the ground in the wrong place (make sure it's in an obvious place), he'll go ballistic, it takes you all of 10 minutes to pick up the the manhole (chamber and all) move it to the correct location (all the while you play stupid) the inspector is happy and the reality is that he leaves Paris burning behind him.
Ralph
Beauty enhances Beauty
Like all things, it's a spectrum.
3 lines scratched on a paper = Courier font. Ugly, but functional.
Over the top elaborate north signs = Comic sans. Hahaha.
We should be aiming for Helvetica, or similar, Pretty, but understated, and easy on the eyes.
Gaudier Platter
Now that's a north arrow. I like that.
The plat is the only part of a survey a client can grab a hold of and look at. Yeah they can go out and see a monument but they can't hold it in their hand while looking at the whole of their property.
I provide nice plats. If a nice plat means I do a poor survey then some of the plats I run across are from some awesome surveyors! Most plats I see that no care was taken to create, also show that little care was taken to survey the property. If you can't provide a good plat then what is the client getting in their mind? They can't grasp spending thousands on a survey just to get a dull plat that is not a joy to look at. So I tend to go with 'why put a fancy bow on a piece of crap?'
To each his own. I believe in nice looking plats to compliment all the hard work I put into the survey.
Gaudier Platter
This is from Lewis and Clark map.
Beauty enhances Beauty
> We should be aiming for Helvetica, or similar, Pretty, but understated, and easy on the eyes.
The downside to the proportional fonts is that they don't make clean tables the way that constant-pitch fonts do.
This entire thread reflects the differances between a surveyor drawing a plat amd a cartographic tech creating a map. BOTH must reflect the same data and accuracies, but the effort by the cartographer is indeed an art form.
Makes me feel real good when my client looks at my drawing and says,"Man!! I'm going to take a copy of that, have it framed and hang it on the wall of my home", or "We came back to your firm because your drawings looked more professional." I have heard both statements made many times.
Grandma Moses made a fortune with her primative works, but Goya created beauty with more detail and finesse. Two different approaches. Depends on the requirements of your craft.
What I do is my craft. I will not draw a plat with one line width, one text style and maybe 2 layers. In my craft that is not professional. If that were what one needs to do, there would be no Corps of Engineers Drafting Standards, Rev. 4.0 or any of the other professional standards.
To complain about someone applying the rules of their craft reflects ignorance of that craft.
Beauty enhances Beauty
Well, that's a topic for another day. The fonts were just similes in this case.
There's still nice looking fixed width fonts out there. eg: Monaco instead of Courier.
Gaudier Platter
John-
That Lewis and Clark north arrow is why my family didn’t get to Oregon until 1913. Beginning in the 1810s, generation after generation of my family dreamed of coming out to the territory and tried to study the maps and notes of the Corps of Discovery. Unfortunately, having IQ’s just slightly higher than Kent’s clients they were too bedazzled by the L & C north arrows to be able to comprehend the rest of the Corps' maps and made no progress for a century. Not until the law began chasing them in earnest in a westerly direction did they arrive here, surprised and delighted that persistent pursuit by the authorities had finally steered them to the Promised Land.
By the way, it’s nice to see that you are posting again.
Beauty enhances Beauty
Twelve hundredths is still pretty small, but it's getting there...:snarky:
