Multivariate label-based thematic maps
Richard Brath, Ebad K. Banissi · International Journal of Cartography · 2017
The rich history of cartography and typography indicates that typographic attributes, such as bold, italic and size, can be used to represent data in labels on thematic maps. These typographic attributes are itemized and characterized for encoding literal, categorical and quantitative data. Label-based thematic maps are shown, including examples that scale to multiple data attributes and a large number of entities. Multiple approaches to handle long labels are considered. Positional and proportional encoding apply attributes to portions of labels for encoding a large number of data attributes or quantitative values. Quantitative evaluation indicates label-based thematic maps may outperform choropleth maps for some tasks. Qualitative evaluation provides guidance for design considerations.