Telling Stories with Maps - by Allen Carroll (Hardcover)

About the Book

Bring place-based data to life with this essential guide to storytelling with maps, written by the founder of ArcGIS StoryMaps, Esri's storytelling platform.

Book Synopsis

Bring data to life with this essential guide to storytelling with maps.

From scraping patterns in sand to drawing intricate lines on vellum and paper, to charting every place on the planet, humans have used maps as a powerful storytelling medium. The advent of the digital age has revolutionized the creation, distribution, and consumption of maps. The web created enormous opportunities for storytelling, enabling maps to dance and weave, partnering with other multimedia elements-photos, video, audio, text-to tell countless tales about our world.

Featuring a foreword by renowned travel writer and cofounder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler, Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-Based Narratives bridges both the analog and digital realms, showcasing how maps themselves tell stories and enrich narratives by providing context and insight. Richly illustrated with examples from traditional maps to the latest digital visualizations, this book is an essential guide for anyone interested in the powerful storytelling potential of maps.

Topics covered include:

• How storytelling is fundamental to our humanity
• Comparing and contrasting the use of words, images, and maps in storytelling
• How maps help us tackle the who, what, when, where, why, and how
• Considerations for the deep connection between maps and memory
• How cartography and location-based storytelling have changed during the digital age
• How the author and his collaborators refined storytelling techniques to create printed wall maps and atlas plates
• The roles that maps play in narrative context

Readers will learn:

• 15 approaches to storytelling and place-based topics
• How exposure to maps and geography can change how we think
• Storytelling approaches suited for digital media yet honoring the centuries-old conventions of cartography
• How to develop multimedia stories with the ability to employ motion and interactivity for your audience
• Practical features and functions of ArcGIS StoryMaps, Esri's storytelling platform, with insight and inspiration you can apply to your stories.

Author Allen Carroll brings his experience from both the National Geographic Society and Esri into his writing. Carroll spent more than a decade of his 27-year career at National Geographic Society as chief cartographer. In 2010, Caroll joined Esri and founded its ArcGIS StoryMaps team, which developed web tools that enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations to tell place-based stories combining interactive maps and multimedia content.

Telling Stories with Maps is a winding journey, from thoughts on how our brains process spatial information to practical tips on creating stories, that will guide and inspire you to create place-based narratives that intrigue readers.

From the Back Cover

Bring your data to life with this essential guide to storytelling with maps.

From scraping patterns in sand to drawing intricate lines on vellum and paper, to charting every place on the planet, humans have used maps as a powerful storytelling medium. The advent of the digital age has revolutionized the creation, distribution, and consumption of maps. The web created enormous opportunities for storytelling, enabling maps to dance and weave, partnering with other multimedia elements--photos, video, audio, text--to tell countless tales about our world.

Featuring a foreword by renowned travel writer and cofounder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler, Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-Based Narratives bridges both analog and digital realms, showcasing how maps themselves tell stories and enrich narratives by providing context and insight. Richly illustrated with examples from traditional maps to the latest digital visualizations, this book is an essential guide for anyone interested in the powerful storytelling potential of maps.

Allen Carroll leads an editorial team at Esri that publishes ArcGIS(R) StoryMaps℠ stories and supports a global community of storytellers who have used ArcGIS StoryMaps to create millions of multimedia narratives. Before joining Esri, Carroll spent 27 years at the National Geographic Society, designing scores of maps for its renowned magazine and other publications. Carroll spearheaded the creation of the seventh and eighth editions of the World Atlas; the publication of many new web resources and other special projects featuring biodiversity, conservation, and Indigenous cultures; and numerous other projects. After joining Esri in 2010, Caroll founded its StoryMaps team, which developed web tools that enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations to tell placebased stories combining interactive maps and multimedia content.

Review Quotes

"It's about telling stories with care - stories that embrace detail, hold complexity, and reveal the patterns that shape the way we live and understand place"

"Original, informative, extraordinary, thought-provoking, deftly crafted, and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-Based Narratives" by Allen Carroll is a unique and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Cartography History collections and supplemental Remote Sensing/Geographic Information Systems curriculum studies lists."

"There are a great many takeaways a reader can gain from
this book. It provides useful guidance for a first-time user of ArcGIS
StoryMaps-outlining the importance of storytelling, demonstrating different
ways to utilize maps in conjunction with images and text, and offering
practical tips for using Esri's storytelling platform--but its reader-ship
should not be limited to beginners...anyone interested in any method of
storytelling can benefit from, and be inspired by, its content. Carroll has an
impressive history in cartography and his writing clearly demonstrates his
strong desire to share his insights with the community."