Now available in paperback for the first time, this classic work presents a cognitive-semiotic framework for understanding how maps work as powerful, abstract, and synthetic spatial representations. Explored are the ways in which the many representational choices inherent in mapping interact with information processing and knowledge construction, and how the resulting insights can be used to make informed symbolization and design decisions. A new preface to the paperback edition situates the book within the context of contemporary technologies. As the nature of maps continues to evolve, Alan MacEachren emphasizes the ongoing need to think systematically about the ways people interact with and use spatial information.

This book is the first systematic integration of cognitive and semiotic approaches to understanding maps as powerful, abstract, and synthetic spatial representations. Presenting a perspective built on four decades of cartographic research, it explores how maps work at multiple levels--from the cognitive to the societal--and provides a cohesive picture of how the many representational choices inherent in mapping interact with the processing of information and construction of knowledge. Utilizing this complex perspective, the author shows how the insights derived from a better understanding of maps can be used in future map design. Although computers now provide the graphic tools to produce maps of similar or better quality than previous manual techniques, they seldom incorporate the conceptual tools needed to make informed symbolization and design decisions. The search for these conceptual tools is the basis for How Maps Work. Following an introduction that discusses various approaches to understanding how maps work, the book explores how meaning is derived from maps. Chapters cover the complex set of interdependent perceptual and cognitive issues relevant to the way in which individuals retrieve information and build knowledge from maps. This is followed by a look at the other side of the representational coin: how maps are imbued with meaning. In this section, a visual semiotics is developed as a way to describe and formalize the process of cartographic representation. This formalization is a critical step toward longer-term goals of building expert systems for map symbolization and design that will free analysts working in interactive visualization environments from the burden of individually making representational decisions. In the final section, the cognitive-semiotic framework constructed in the first two sections is used to explore dramatic new developments in Geographic Visualization (GVIS). Emphasis is on the role of maps,