While doing illustrative work for Roderick Peattie, from him I learned the value of the unorthodox. - Arthur H. Robinson

Good design looks right. It is simple (clear and uncomplicated). Good design is also elegant, and does not look contrived. A map should be aesthetically pleasing, thought provoking, and communicative

I started with a kind of artistic approach... I visualized the best-looking shapes and sizes. I worked with the variables until it got to the point where, if I changed one of them, it didn't get any better... [only then I] figure out the mathematical formula to produce that effect.

In an important sense, all cartography is an art in that it is representational and that operation always involves some degree of abstraction. Geographical reality is infinitely complex and its complete depiction is quite impossible; elements must be left out and intricacies modified as a consequence of the fundamental requirement of information reduction. All maps, therefore, are abstractions and the decisions involved in the process are artistic in the sense that many of them must be made subjectively by the cartographer.