The blog of artist cartographer Anton Thomas

North America Map: the Basics

8/24/2020

Now that prints of North America are finally out there, it’s a good time to unpack its basic conventions. The map might have a whopping cartouche, but it certainly has no key.

Contents

Basics
Projection
Cities - selection and population grade
Language
Extent of North America

Basics

First, just a quick chart. These were designed to be intuitive and generally self-explanatory, but it's still good to have them outlined!

Projection

One of the first things to consider with most maps is its projection.

In this case, I simply zoomed out on Google Earth for the appearance of viewing N.A. from space, and traced that onto the paper using a projector. This makes the map a modified perspective projection. It’s important to know it’s not an equal area projection. Scale does vary across the map.

That said, scale is quite similar through much of it. It's where Earth curves in the corners that the difference gets enormous. As areas shift further away, scale shrinks. This is most evident in Alaska, which is rather small on this map.

In real life, Alaska is 2.5x the size of Texas. Compare the two and you'll get a sense of the distortion.

The original projection used to trace the coastlines in 2014. North America zoomed out in Google Earth.

The closer to a corner you get, the smaller the scale is.

An equal area projection would have caused a dramatic size reduction through most of the map. Alaska is so huge, and extends so far northwest, there would’ve been less room for detail throughout the project. Also, much more ocean.

So... I’m very sorry about that Alaska! But as you’re usually relegated to an inset box (like Hawaii), with an even more reduced scale… I hope this will suffice. I wanted to at least keep you contiguous.

Also, you'll note the curve of the globe emphasised by labels. State, island and ocean labels reflect the curve where possible. And the curve can be tracked clearly at the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer – the only lines of latitude on the map.

The Arctic Circle running through NW Canada. This line of latitude outlines just how curvy the projection is.

Cities

Cities were selected based on population. The idea was to include all metropolitan regions with more than 100,000 people, with a much lower threshold in remote areas (particularly Canada/the Arctic). The population bracket of any city would then be displayed through its label size. Once over a million, labels are capitalised.

The general population guide to metropolitan regions. Cities in the USA are based on metro statistical areas.

There is plenty of inconsistency across the map, reflecting many years of hand-drawing. Usually within a region it's consistent, but if you compare say... the Mexico City label to New York's, you'll see the difference. Rather than attempt precision with a metric that shifts over time anyway, the label system was designed to evoke the prominence of each locale.

City selection is perhaps the most controversial element of the project. If your city isn't on there and you think it should be... it can be very frustrating. This is particularly difficult with large metropolitan regions. Skylines require so much space, so I didn’t usually break them into their various hubs.

The metropolitan statistical area list was my go-to for the US, and it was a good guideline for broad metro regions. But some cities have multiple hubs, while some are twin cities.

As short as space was, I wish I could've done a few differently. Examples include Oakland (San Francisco), St Petersburg (Tampa), and San Bernardino (Los Angeles). Cartography is full of constant omission and simplification. Our world is vast. Still, city selection is something I’ll refine in the future, as the single skyline sometimes isn’t enough.

Including Modesto but not Oakland has never endeared me to the Bay Area.

Language

Throughout the map, my general rule for labelling was to label things in the official or most prevalent language of wherever I was drawing. Throughout the USA it was English. Mexico and Central America (except for Belize), Spanish. Canada mostly English, but French in Québec. The Caribbean a mix of Spanish, English and French.

This is evident when observing border rivers. It’s labelled Rio Grande on the American side, and Río Bravo on the Mexican. It’s the Ottawa River in Ontario, Outaouais in Québec.

Rio Grande on the US side, Río Bravo in Mexico.

The Dominican Republic labelled in Spanish.

I did this to emphasise the authentic character of how each place is understood locally, though the approach has plenty of inconsistency. For example, the island of Hispaniola is shared between Haiti (French) and the Dominican Republic (Spanish). Both have different names for the island itself, so I opted for the Haitian version (Hispaniola) because it matches the English version I use. The Spanish La Española was not used. Puzzles like this come up constantly with a bilingual approach.

While this method can work in the Americas, it may not elsewhere. As long as I'm writing everything by hand, alternate alphabets (from Russian Cyrillic to Japanese Kanji) could scuttle this idea for good!

What is North America?

There are many definitions of North America, and a continent is a rather abstract notion. Earth’s landmasses are perfectly irregular, and they're all islands at the end of the day.

Definitions can vary throughout the world, but the 7-continent model is generally accepted. Asia, Africa, N America, S America, Antarctica, Europe, Australia. I hope throughout my life to draw all seven at this scale, each one being a new portrait of a continent. (Antarctica would be my preference right now...)

So, North and South America need a dividing line, and it's generally placed at the border of Panama and Colombia. The legendary Darién gap.

I can understand the concern that Central America and the Caribbean would be enveloped within a North America title. Central is often viewed as its own subcontinent, including within Latin America itself. Still, in terms of the physical geography, Central is more cleanly part of North America.

My broad definition of N.A. is missing three extremities however. Alaska’s Aleutian Islands (the bane of many cartographers... they stretch halfway to Japan), the Caribbean Lesser Antilles, and the very tops of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. Meanwhile, Hawaii is included in an inset map - despite being Polynesian rather than North American. This was to complete all 50 United States, the country on this map with over half of the continent’s population.

The map detail stops clean at the doorstep of South America.

What else?

With literally tens of thousands of tiny illustrated features, there's a lot more. This blog was just to outline the very basics, but in the next guide I will share some motifs and symbols that are commonly used. These include music, sports, seasons, state and national symbols, history, agriculture, mining and much more.

Thanks everyone!

Did you enjoy this blog? Check out some more eclectic tours of North America!

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