I know. I totally agree. He's very wrong.
I've always felt that way...
...just...
please...don't hurt me.
Don
Utility vs. Decoration
> The primary purpose of a car is to convey passengers from point A to point B. There were some fine examples of cars designed purely for those purposes, like the Moscvich, Yugo, Skoda....
Probably the better comparison is between a car like a modern BMW with a functional aesthetic and a late 1950's Harley Earle Cadillac. Who cares whether the Cadillac actually drives well? Just look at those tail fins, will you?
An art car is fun to see by the curb, but it's understood that nobody asks what sort of gas mileage it gets. The surveyors who want to sell highly decorated maps are often basically taking junker surveys and sticking on a bunch of stuff so that nobody will pay any attention to the essentials.
Speaking of Yugo
here a wiring diagram for one.....
no, wait.....
Speaking of BMW's
Love it. Whoever uses that has got that rare combination of sense and great taste. No curlicues and no dead deer. What a concept!
> > God bless you, Mr. Lines, but you've got a long road ahead of you if you think you're going to have the last word here.
>
> Well, B. Lines seems to want to argue that the main purpose of survey maps isn't to communicate information about the surveyor's findings. That's such an odd proposition that it almost isn't even worth debating. The graphic design problem of how to effectively communicate information through the medium of the map is fairly straight forward, but it isn't art. The derailment arrives when surveyors confuse making a pretty map with the real task that they ought to have engaged, which was communicating information that was in fact technical in nature.
Law of the instrument
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
Abraham Maslow 1966
Best wishes,
BL
> "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
Not really. If the problem is communication and you're using a medium to communicate, it's a fundamental idea not to pretend that decorative clutter enhances communication. One could turn out a surveyor's report in Olde English lettering, complete with illuminated capitals at the beginnings of paragraphs, for example. Just because the weird result might look like an ancient manuscript suitable for framing doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.
> > "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
>
> Not really. If the problem is communication and you're using a medium to communicate, it's a fundamental idea is not to pretend that decorative clutter enhances communication. One could turn out a surveyor's report in Olde English lettering, complete with illuminated capitals at the beginnings of paragraphs, for example. Just because the weird result might look like an ancient manuscript suitable for framing doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.
I get it, you don't like mixing art with maps, to you the answer to the question the map is providing is always technical and nothing else, you sem to view technical aspects as always being the only reason for creating a map, however depending on the requirements for the map and the purpose upon which it needs to be relied upon your assumption is often quite false.
A purpose of a map could be art, technical, or to draw attention to a particular situation, or to draw attention away from a stuation or cause, there is almost always a financial component.
There many many reasons for creating and using a map and believe it or not many reasons are not technical in nature, I would even argue that in the overall context of life as a whole, the technical details don't matter as much as whether or not the map actually accomplished the goal it was created for, to me that is the measure of a map.
> I get it, you don't like mixing art with maps, to you the answer to the question the map is providing is always technical and nothing else, you sem to view technical aspects as always being the only reason for creating a map, however depending on the requirements for the map and the purpose upon which it needs to be relied upon your assumption is often quite false.
Well, I'm going to wager that over 90% of the maps that professional surveyors make are for the express purpose of depicting some technical information such as the location of land boundaries, the evidence that supports the surveyor's opinion about such location, the location of improvements, etc. So, while I wouldn't wager that some surveyor isn't spending his or her time making maps of things unrelated to land surveying, the issue is land survey maps.
