Design: All possibilities rush to one point. 1

Posted by Aaron Gerdes Sat, 22 Apr 2006 06:18:00 GMT

Catching up on PJ Brunet’s blog, I read an interesting quote, from Cartographic Principles (it’s the third):

3. SIMPLICITY FROM SACRIFICE Great design tends towards simplicity. (Bertin) Its not what you put in that makes a great map but what you take out. The map design stage is complete when you can take nothing else out. Running the film of an explosion backwards, all possibilities rush to one point. They become the right point. This is the designers skill. Content may determine scale or scale may determine content, and each determines the level of generalisation (sacrifice).

Interesting way of putting it.

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  1. PJ Brunet at Knowing Art about 9 hours later:

    I can’t take credit for the quote, but I think we agree that rewinding this kind of explosion is pretty seductive. Maybe we watched too many A-Team episodes.

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