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June 29, 2010 Get details:
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| The most expressive
variables associated to symbols are colour and size. More
authoritative than others, colour (or hue) serves as a powerful
system of differentiation, burdened with cultural meaning,
overwhelmed by its associations and its history. Yet colour is a
code that is constantly subject to change (Ferrier, 2002).
Nonetheless, when it comes to mapping Earth features there are
some silent conventions which have become common practice: water
bodies are shown as blue and vegetation as green; more is darker
and less is lighter. |
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Hue |
Feature |
Hue |
Feature |
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Forest (1) |
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Orchard |
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Forest (2) |
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Vegetable Garden |
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Forest (3) |
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Paddy field |
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Forest (4) |
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Sugarcane |
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Forest (5) |
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Residential area |
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Grassland |
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Resettlement area |
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Shifting Cultivation |
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Mangroves |
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Lake, sea and river |
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Other hues are associated with traditional meanings depending on
the cultural traits of the participating communities: death is
associated to white in India, to black among westerners and
violet amid Mangians in the Philippines.
“What these various figurative uses of colour have in common is
the way that they present colour as linked with perception, and
as perception that is not neutral or objective, but value added
that is, overlaid with cultural value (Ferrier 2002).
In mapmaking, the association of a specific
hue to a symbol is therefore far from being a neutral act. The
same applies to points, lines, areas and volumes, the remaining
sets of symbols. When used to depict real world features their
choice and their variation correspond to selected
interpretations of reality made by those who compose the map.
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