Art or Cartogrpahy - What is a map?

[Jalyha]

So... I've been wondering about this.

When I think of a map, I think (obviously) of *places*, and then I think of the "traditional" aspects of maps. A "key", a "scale", labels everywhere, a "compass"... Things like that.

I've been struggling, a lot. I'm a LANDSCAPE artist. Why is it so hard for me to draw land while mapping? A lot of the problem I've been running into is that a picture/painting/photo speaks for itself. You don't need to say "This is a mountain". You can see it's a mountain.

I've always assumed that a map is a picture that doesn't speak for itself... so it *needs* all those elements; otherwise it's not a map. Right?

So I start trying to draw a map and I think, "There's no way to label this" or "You couldn't put a scale to this", and "okay, then it's not a map".

And then I give up.

But then I look at that blog post. The first word in my head when I glance at either of those images is "Map."

On reading this, I looked back at last month's "Lite Challenge" entries. There was a bit of conversation during the contest about what constitutes a "map". That conversation affected *my* vote. I'm sure it probably influenced others as well. (I don't think it would have changed the winner, but others might have gotten a few more votes).

One entry was a 3D projection. No key, no scale. But it did convey information. I could tell where the village lay, in the valley, what the surrounding countryside was comprised of, where the key buildings were in the village itself.

I can imagine an attacking army would be keen to have that image. It would do exactly what military maps are meant to do.

The winning entry only had a scale, discreetly placed as the border to the image itself. Even without the scale, however, you could have judged the distances, because of all the detail. Would it still have been a map without the scale?

Would the Captain's Cabin from the blog post be a map without the words at the bottom?

What I see in these definitions is that it doesn't matter what type of information is displayed, as long as it's useful information, it's a map; whether it's a scale, or a key, or a demarcation of time.

What I'm wondering, in short, is if ANY picture of a space/area/land/whatever could be a map as long as it has some sort of useful "data"?

If I painted a landscape, and indicated the height of the mountains, the distance to the city, the width of the river, etc... has it become a map?

[Gamerprinter]

I personally don't feel a photograph with labels qualifies as a map, though it could be argued once labels were placed it was indeed a map. For me a map has to be created, by some means other than with a camera. That said, yes, as long as there is some labeled information in the region depicted, its a map. A map should contain a compass rose (or at least some directional device pointing to north or other singular known direction), and a scale of some kind, whether that is a grid with a known square size, bar scale or other means of depicting distance. Additional labels can be included as required for the purpose of a given map. As you say, as long some kind of useful data can be extracted from the pictorial information provided - its a map.

An unlabeled depiction of a given region is, at best, an unfinished map or at worst an image of some region of terrain only. You need to provide some additional labeling to qualify as a map, IMO.

A legend may be unnecessary, I seldom include one. I think a legend is especially useful when symbols on the map might not be universally recognized - upward pointing triangles representing mountains, for example. When I depict a mountain as a beveled shape depicting elevation rising, I might label a mountainous region as "X Mountain Range" which is enough for me to indicate this is a mountain. I don't need a separate box deliniating mountains, as there is more than one depiction, all the mountains may vary slightly as they are intended to appear as real mountains, and not as a singular symbol to represent a mountain. Since there is more than one version, each slightly different, a legend showing mountain symbol may not be so helpful. Especially when you are using brushes, with only single symbols for each landform or map location, then a legend is appropriate.

There are many kinds of labels and symbols that could be used on a map, but a map only needs scale and direction at the minimum to still qualify as a map, based on my definition above.