Cartography is about representation. This statement may seem obvious, but it has been overlooked in our search for organizing principles for the fiel… - Alan MacEachren

Jacques Bertin's books Semiology of Graphics and Graphics and Graphic Information Processing have been stimuli for my own thinking about the representation and analysis of geographic information. I have also used both books as core readings for graduate seminars and they have generated lively discussion and prompted innovative research. I often ask graduate students to consider how cartographic research and practice in the U.S. might be different today if the English edition of Semiology of Graphics had appeared in 1967 (when it was published in French), rather than in 1983. I know that my own work would have been dramatically different if I had encountered these ideas a decade and a half sooner.

Exploring maps as representation forges important links between cartography and a variety of cognate fields concerned with this topic in its various facets (including geographical information systems [GIs] and remote sensing, as well as art, cognitive science, sociology, cognitive and environmental psychology, semiotics, and even the history and philosophy of science).

The fact that map is a fuzzy and radial, rather than a precisely defined, category is important because what a viewer interprets a display to be will influence her expectations about the display and how she interacts with it.