The move from printed media to digital media has had a huge impact on the way cartography is used and consumed. News rooms around the world are not only using maps to illustrate their written content but also as a form of branding. MapCreator is an online mapping software that gives journalists access to cartographic tools.
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In Conversation
From Printed Maps to an Automated Map Factory
Daniel: You come from a company called MapCreator, and it’s got a bit of an interesting background. I’d really like to hear that story before we dive into the problems that MapCreator is actually solving. Maybe you could tell us about the history of MapCreator.
Christian: Sure, and thanks a lot for having me. MapCreator was officially established 12 years ago. We basically come from the cartographic environment, meaning that we were part of a large geographic company in the Netherlands. Back then — and I’m talking about 18 years ago — they had a big challenge, because navigation systems came up. This cartographic company sold printed maps to a big audience, meaning a lot of people that drive cars and use printed maps to find their way, and this was a big part of their revenue. And their map making process was basically done by hand — a lot of handwork, no optimization.
Christian: They had to shift in a moving world, and what they did is they took on a self-invented map making system where they could generate the same maps which they had done all by hand, but then fully automated. Of course there is some handwork there, but there was a big difference between what it was and what it was afterwards. Basically they could fully optimize their map making process, and in this challenging market where navigation systems pushed away a lot of the printed maps, they were still able to run a good business and to do far more custom mapping products than they did in the past. So basically to up their game in a declining market.
Daniel: Maybe we could just talk about that for a minute, because that’s really interesting. A lot of us don’t really think about all those companies that had to make a huge pivot back in the day when digital mapping showed up. So when they were working mainly with printed maps they were solving the problem of navigation, and you mentioned most of those maps were used for people driving cars getting around Europe. So what did they pivot to? They started making digital maps — what was the focus of these digital maps, what market were they solving problems for?
Christian: It was actually that they had a digital system to generate printed maps. What they were generating was vector files, editable vector files, which you can incorporate in all kinds of products, both digital and printed. But their main focus — and the evolution happened in the years after, they went to digital also with our help — but the first basic reason was to get this digital system in place, to get the workflow of creating maps which normally was done by hand into a computer system which could generate those same printed maps, and even more at the same time, and fully optimized. So the first focus was purely towards print.
Daniel: That’s really interesting, and thanks for clarifying that for us, because what I was envisioning was moving from printed maps onto the internet, to digital maps there. But what you’re saying is what they did is they moved from that manual process of creating maps to creating some automation around that — but the maps themselves were still used for the same purpose. I guess we forget sometimes that companies like this have to take small steps. That’s a massive leap, from the manual process of creating cartographic output to working completely in a digital world where the maps and the output only exist on the internet.
Putting Map Making in the Hands of Journalists
Daniel: That gives us a little bit of background about where the company came from. But then this company decided that wasn’t enough, so they started up another company called MapCreator. What I’d really like to talk about is that you’re very focused on making maps for media outlets. Can you tell me a little bit about the problem you’re solving in that space? Because these are maps that affect a lot of people, they have a huge distribution. I was looking at your website and I see some of the people that you’re working with — let me name a few: the Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, Reuters, the Daily Telegraph. These are big news agencies. What problems are you solving for them?
Christian: At first, after being around with MapCreator a couple of years, we started working with some local newsrooms with the same kind of solution that we were helping cartographic companies with. Back in 2014 we were in a phase where we were not sure where we could best focus in terms of markets, because we were serving a lot of different markets. At that time we felt that we could make a big difference in newsrooms, the news media outlets that you also named. Basically we are helping them to get map making into the hands of journalists.
Christian: In the past there were quite big graphics staffs amongst local and national and world newsrooms. That declined a bit, because a lot of printed news outlets have lost quite a bit of audience. And in this losing of audience they still want to bring quality news out there, and for them it was very important to, besides having written content, also have graphical content in their own look and feel. Meaning that every newsroom, every news outlet, has thought about very carefully what kind of fonts they use, what kind of colouring they use — and not only for their maps obviously, but for all their design. The design of news is very important in how they bring the news into the world, and mapping is a good part of that.
Christian: What we really could solve is to bring the mapping tool — which is nowadays an online solution — to a bigger group in the newsrooms, and to have more journalists working on all different kinds of content. So not only written content: journalists nowadays need to create content but also make a picture and create a graphic supporting design for this news article. And especially mapping, showing locations of news items — which obviously is not important in all news items, but in a lot of news items a location really emphasizes the story very much. And then if a non-specialist can generate high quality output which serves their custom brand — nowadays our main focus is toward newsrooms because of this.
Daniel: You said a lot of really interesting things there and a couple of things I think would be worth picking out. One would be that I think sometimes we forget, when we see these articles — these big newsrooms have a huge amount of distribution, these articles are read possibly by millions of people all over the world — we forget that perhaps it’s the journalist that is actually creating the written content and maybe also the visual content. A lot of people listening to this will be map creators themselves, and perhaps they’ll see a few cartographic rules being broken from time to time, or perhaps cartographic output that doesn’t fit that standard that we were taught in university.
Maps as Branding
Daniel: Another thing was this idea of branding by using maps — as another way of branding yourself, saying, hey, we believe in this, this is our font, these are our colors, this is our look and feel, this is the message that we want to send out into the world and how we want to send it out. We see this all the time in other forms of graphical output, but I’ve never really thought about it in terms of cartography, in terms of mapping. And I could imagine that if you could master this as a news outlet, you could add that extra layer of stickiness to your articles and that extra layer of personalization.
Christian: What I could add to this is that for the readers, for the audience, it’s very important to see branded content in general — to see, this is the news outlet that I trust, that I want to pay a subscription for. And nowadays not only for print but of course also for online, and all kinds of ways to subscribe to their content. We can contribute to the branded content nowadays for all platforms, and make this easier and more approachable.
Daniel: You’re talking about these newsrooms — they’ve moved from a different model. Before, there was maybe only three newspapers, five or six magazines, so the distribution was very clear, there weren’t so many competitors in the marketplace. Now a lot of them have moved online, and there’s a huge amount of competition, so these people are competing for subscribers. One way of getting subscribers is having really great content, and you’re talking about mapping and cartography not only being a form of branding but also a way of creating content. With the rise of social media, one thing that we’ve seen is that visual aspect to stories — that’s the bit that hooks people. They see a great picture on a social media network and they click through, and this is what these companies want. They want us to click through, they want us to read the article, they want us to engage, which is understandable.
When Maps Bend the Truth
Daniel: Have you seen a rise in viral mapping? What I mean by that is people purposely trying to get people to engage by perhaps provoking them in some way, using a map that perhaps distorts the truth a little bit, or doesn’t show the whole truth. I think most of the people listening to this podcast have seen maps like that, where they think, oh okay, I can see what you’re doing there, it’s perhaps not exactly the case. Have you seen any examples like that?
Christian: Yeah, there are definitely some newsrooms that make their own truth, so to say. I can’t be explicit about the examples, but via social media, off and on we get sometimes people that have seen maps from us and that come and share mistakes with us. We have to be of course very careful, because the news outlet has done it with a purpose, and obviously the person that has seen it has a different opinion of it. But we definitely see examples in the world where people change the map willingly to emphasize the story, and that could conflict in some cases with what is the actual status. But these things happen, and that also belongs to the mapping industry — especially when part of the data we deliver is basically open, in that they can manually edit the vector file which comes out of the system. So we can’t fully control the content which goes out there. But that’s definitely things that we see in the world and that happen, and which we always try to respond politely to.
Flexibility vs Cartographic Rules
Daniel: Could we stay with this topic just for a second? And this is definitely not to belabor the point, or to point anyone with the big finger of blame — this is just to expand on it a little bit. You create this tool and you’re democratizing access to it, you’re giving a lot of journalists access to it. Do you find yourself between a rock and a hard place? You want to create this incredibly flexible tool and you want them to use it, but there must be some part that thinks, oh okay, there are also some rules here. Do you do anything to set any boundaries, or is it a completely open system?
Christian: Obviously the base data — we work with very solid data providers, because that also belongs to our tool: not only delivering the customization but also having a good data source in place. At the end, I think what makes us quite unique in the world is that we offer them a mapping platform where they can generate basically their own needed content. Nowadays, for example, we also work with legal designers which use our products for internal processes, but they have to influence the map content not from a cartographic point of view but from a lawyer’s point of view, which is completely different.
Christian: So we are in the middle there, but I think it belongs to the core value of what we deliver that our end user is flexible with the map content. And obviously there are rules for cartography which we want to raise with them in the best possible way, with this accurate data source which comes into our platform. We really want to be a partner in custom mapping and creating that unique map that makes a difference. So there’s a tipping point where we need to step away and say, okay, we leave it up to our users. That’s definitely challenging, especially looking at our cartographers which we have here working on the layout for the customers, and hoping that the output is true to the database — but at the end the user needs to decide, and that belongs to the way we work with our users.
Daniel: I think something like this is always going to be open to interpretation. At the start we talked about that idea of using cartographic output as a way of branding. When you’re trying to create a certain look and feel with regards to a graphic, you’re not necessarily worried about following the exact rules of cartography — you’re trying to create this thing that represents you or your organization. So there are a lot of factors there that are almost working against each other. We’ve got this idea of branding, we’ve got the rules around cartography — what makes a good map, what is acceptable, how do we best represent the world and the truth — and also you’ve got people that are perhaps in some cases motivated by creating that graphic that’s going to provoke a reaction, a response, and get people to engage.
Christian: That’s true, it’s a lot of things that are working there. And again with the database — if you have an accurate database which you give, then you already set the standards for the output which goes out.
What Feedback Looks Like
Daniel: Can you give us an idea of what kind of feedback you get from people? Because I’m thinking, if I see one of your maps out in the world and it creates such a reaction that I have to write to you, then I’m obviously a passionate person, a dedicated person. I either really agree with what this map has shown or I strongly disagree with it. Can you give me a little bit of an idea of some of the feedback that you receive based on your maps?
Christian: Part of the feedback we get is people that feel engaged with the map but don’t feel tied to it, because the content is in their eyes not correct. So that’s quite some of the feedback we get. In a lot of cases, for some reason people in the digital world look more at digital maps than at printed maps, especially because you get the responses via the digital world in general. And this is where you get the most positive feedback, where they give you feedback that they really like the way the map works — in terms of the technology behind it, how you zoom and scroll and how you cluster information on top of a map. So we get quite a bit of response on those kinds of functionalities we offer. Those are the majority of the feedback which comes in. Obviously we get all kinds of feedback, but if I would take the ones that are mostly heard and seen, then those are the ones.
Daniel: That’s really interesting, about getting feedback both positive and negative, and what people choose to concentrate on. You said something about people responding to some of the technical aspects of your maps — being able to zoom and scroll and make clusters. Those are really interesting features. Maps are so integrated in our lives now that people just intuitively get how to do that. I’m thinking about the cluster feature, for example — is it difficult for people to understand how it works? Do you get questions on that?
Christian: The awareness of maps today, or let’s say 20 years ago, is completely different. Because we have something like Google Maps, so much accessible for everybody, then it’s very easy for people to understand how maps work and how they operate. I even see it with my son — I have an eight-year-old son, and at school he gets topography lessons nowadays, but they also take in Google Maps as an example, together with printed books still.
The Shift Back to Static
Daniel: We’ve talked a lot about maps, how they’re used, how people respond to them, and perhaps the good and bad side of having so many maps out there in the world at the moment. If we look out into the future, how do you see this industry changing? Do you see any trends developing that are going to lead us in certain directions in terms of mapping and media and these big media outlets?
Christian: If we look at newsrooms, I think fewer people need to do more, but they still have to step up, so more graphical content needs to go into their publications, both digital and printed. The thing is, in every platform we see different kinds of maps appearing. I think a couple of years ago it was more like a mainstream solution — if you can copy what you have in print to digital, or the other way around, that was more the way of working. Nowadays in every platform, even in social media, they want to have their own direction in terms of mapping.
Christian: Besides that, looking at the digital world, a lot of big newsrooms were into interactive content a lot, and we see them shifting more to static content, to easy content — not only in maps but also in other parts. People interacting really with graphical content is not that important anymore, and I see that declining in the newsroom world. They want to show off in news, they want to make their point with a good news story, with colour, with quality content, with pictures, with good graphics — but not the ones that you really interact with. There’s definitely some content still where they should interact, but that’s to a very minimum level. If you go online to a couple of the large newsrooms you named, then you will definitely see that there is less content where you can interact and more static content. And of course this static content needs to be responsive towards a lot of devices, if you take the website as an example. These are definitely things that are shifting.
Daniel: A couple of things really stood out for me there. The first one was the fact that, as a news outlet, they have social media, so they need to produce cartographic output in a whole bunch of different formats. If you know anything about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you’ll know that they have their own resolutions that they prefer, and that can make a big difference to the amount of engagement you get. And I thought that observation that people are moving away from dynamic, interactive maps that you can scroll around and do things on, to more static images, was really interesting — because for a while dynamic maps were the rage, this was the future, everything was going to be scrollable and zoomable and interactive. I can’t help but wonder if that’s got something to do with the distribution they have now through social media, and needing to create this graphic output in image formats.
Print as a Quality Signal
Christian: The other way, I think — a lot of people said that for newsrooms print was basically dying. And what we now see is that the newsrooms that are still there, they still have a print outlet, and they use that more as a quality piece, which still is important to them. They are in a shifting world still in terms of the business model itself, but if you talk about the content, then it will always be my vision — but that’s my honest opinion — that print will be more of a quality product, and will always last. That’s quite exciting to see, because years back people thought it’s just a couple of years and then nobody would use a printed newspaper anymore, which is definitely not the case.
Daniel: You’re talking about news outlets still having a physical magazine or newspaper, and it sounded to me like it was almost seen as a status symbol — that this was a piece of quality content that they were still making. I think that’s interesting, because if you look at music for example, nobody produces CDs anymore, but vinyl records — the sale of vinyl records has doubled year after year for the last 12 or 15 years. It’s incredible, and it’s because we’re getting back to this being a physical thing and it’s a mark of quality. I hope that maps will keep that status as well, that we won’t just see digital output, that we’ll continue to see printed maps out there in the world.
Christian: Definitely. Of course every news outlet has their own focus, because there are still a lot of news outlets that earn a lot of money with their printed output, because it’s seen by big audiences. But in general I could definitely say that print is becoming more something that shows the quality of your complete news outlet. And then looking at the cartography there, which is completely different — only the colours there, which are CMYK, is not something that really works well on digital. So there’s a big difference there. But the majority of our users are still using a lot of printed CMYK maps, which we are happy about, because they represent also the quality that we hope the maps will get.
Daniel: You made another really great point there about the difference between digital and printed maps, and that was in the colour palettes that are used. What looks great in print, in a physical map, might not necessarily translate to a digital map, and vice versa. So not only are these news outlets having to create this huge amount of cartographic output in a variety of formats, but they also have to consider what colours they’re using as well, and perhaps change the map dramatically depending on that.
Can You Make a Map Without Making a Political Statement?
Daniel: I’ve just got a few questions before I let you go. Quick fire questions, but of course take your time, give a meaningful answer. Is it possible to make a map without making a political statement?
Christian: That’s a very good question. It’s in the eye of the beholder, of course, but I would say yes, it’s possible — because if you don’t emphasize for example country borders, which is the most important thing. It really depends on how you’re displaying the map, but it’s definitely possible. But it all has to do with the emphasis you make in terms of the map itself. In a lot of cases, it is political, so you can’t escape that.
Daniel: I think perhaps a better question from my side would have been: if I made a map non-political, would it still have enough meaning, would I have enough messaging to really get the point across? As soon as you start filtering it out and averaging things out, maybe even dumbing it down in terms of the amount of information you’re showing people, it becomes more of a question — can this map tell the story without these other layers on it?
Christian: It depends obviously on what the story is about. I would say the overall goal with creating a map is to make sure that you can emphasize the story which you already had done partly with words, and then support that with a map that justifies this whole story and that shows more about the story. So really at the end it has to do with the emphasis of the story itself. Leaving away information is only when you need to emphasize, or when you want to show something and it helps to show this particular thing by leaving away information — then I think that’s definitely helpful. But it all has to do with the story, so it’s hard to give you an exact answer to this question. I think it depends from story to story.
Daniel: I think you actually did a really great job of answering that question — just that last thing you said there, that it’s from story to story, from map to map. It depends on the story, it depends on the map, what message am I trying to get across. You guys have this huge focus on maps for news, for media outlets, giving them access to mapping to be able to create their own cartographic output. Who in the industry is doing this really well? Is there a certain news outlet where you think, wow, those guys are doing a really great job of producing maps?
Christian: If I could take one good example of a news outlet that is producing an amazing amount of maps in all kinds of forms, it is Bild in Germany. They are located in Berlin, in the media house Axel Springer, which is one of the bigger news media houses in the world. Bild itself really pushes out a lot of mapping content in all kinds of ways — interactive, static, social media. They have their own social media channels for the department that creates their graphics and their maps, and you will see there that they are top-notch in terms of the quality and the quantity of their maps for all kinds of different platforms. So that’s definitely a good news outlet to mention that is on top of their maps very well.
Daniel: Christian, I really want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation — it’s sent us down a few rabbit holes, but I hope that the listeners have learned a lot about the process of creating maps for media and some of the challenges along the way. Before I let you go, can you tell us where we can go to learn more about you and your company?
Christian: We have a website, mapcreator.io, which is the base for everything we do. Obviously MapCreator has a social media appearance on all the important channels, and on YouTube with video — actually all the social media channels where we keep our audience up to date on everything which happens here. So I would say our social media channels and our website are definitely the place to go if you want to find out more.
Daniel: Once again, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
