Download - Automatic Typographic Maps
Shehzad Afzal*, Ross Maciejewski†, Yun Jang‡, Niklas Elmqvist*, David S. Ebert* Purdue University*, Arizona State University†, Sejong University in Seoul ‡
Spatial Text Visualization Using Automatic Typographic Maps
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Motivation
AxisMaps.com
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Motivation
• Typographic Map: Map made entirely of the geographical labels (i.e., “Type”)
• Aesthetically pleasing
• Exists only for handful of cities
• Printed map sold from $30-$150’
AxisMaps.comSan Francisco
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MotivationHow are these maps designed?• Manual text placement using Adobe Illustrator over an
‘OpenStreetMap’ image• Text options are modified based on underlying spatial
features• Process takes several weeks to complete one map
• Focus of their current approach is ‘purely aesthetic’
• Our work “Automates the Typographic Map Generation Process”
• Potential of visualizing data using spatialized text
Image Courtesy: AxisMaps.com
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Related Work• Maharik et al. (2011) introduced ‘calligrams’
(digital micrography images)
• ‘TagMaps’ by Yahoo: Word clouds on top of graphical features
• ‘Wordle’ by Viegas et al (2009), ‘ManiWordle’ by Koh et al (2010) & ‘SparkClouds’ by Lee et al (2010)
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System Overview
OSM Parser
Data Cleaning/Filtering
Build Graphical Objects & Layers
Optimizations
Region Generation
Path/Road Generation
Open Street Map(OSM) File
Open Street Map(OSM) File
Visual Properties/Style Sheet
SVG FileSVG File
SVG Renderer
Typographic Map
SVG Code Generation
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System Overview
OSM Parser
Data Cleaning/Filtering
Build Graphical Objects & Layers
Optimizations
Region Generation
Path/Road Generation
Open Street Map(OSM) File
Open Street Map(OSM) File
Visual Properties/Style Sheet
SVG FileSVG File
SVG Renderer
Thema-Typographic
MapSpatial Statistical Dataset
SVG Code Generation
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Data Model• Layers: Particular class of geographical objects
• e.g., Highways, Primary roads, park etc.• Visual Attributes such as font size, color, weight etc.
• Graphical Objects belong to exactly one layer • 1D paths(roads) or 2D paths(polygons)
• Ordering Layers: • Layers are drawn in ascending order of priority
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Data Model• Ordering Layers:
• 1D Paths have higher priority than 2D Paths• Ordering Graphical Objects within Layers:
• Horizontal Paths have higher priority than vertical paths
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Optimizations• Divided lanes having the same label are merged together to
form a single lane
• Font size for polygonal areas adjusted according to the area
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Limitations• Definitions of polygonal areas are not always consistent in
OSM. e.g., Rivers & lakes boundaries
• Segments of same road have different names or category and they often overlap
• OSM data is not completely defined for some geographic regions
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Paths as Text• Rendering Path using Text:
• Fit Text to path and repeat it for the duration of path’s length• Rotate characters to align with path normal• Path thickness is controlled by font size
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Paths as Text• Visual Clutter - Path Overlap:
Clutter from Label Overlap Character Mask Character Halo
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Regions as Text
Bounding Box filled with Oriented Text Clipped Text using Region Path
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Regions as Text
Adjacent Regions: Vary the orientation of the lines in adjacent regions resulting in visual continuity between regions
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Comparison with AxisMap Output
AxisMaps Map of San Francisco, CA Automatic Typographic Map of San Francisco, CA
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Comparison with AxisMap Output
AxisMaps Map of San Francisco, CA Automatic Typographic Map of San Francisco, CA
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Comparison with AxisMap Output
AxisMaps Map of San Francisco, CA Automatic Typographic Map of San Francisco, CA
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Comparison with AxisMap Output
AxisMaps Map of San Francisco, CA Automatic Typographic Map of San Francisco, CA
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Typographic Map - Seattle
Automatic Typographic Map – Seattle near VisWeek 2012 Venue
Visweek Venue
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Typographic Map - Chicago
Automatic Typographic Map – Chicago, IL
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Thema-Typographic Maps
Thematic Maps:
Geographic Maps where Geospatial variable is visually encoded on the map
Thema-Typographic Maps: Modify Font attributes on per character level to convey the value of a statistical variable at each character’s spatial location
Font Attributes: Typically Size, but color, intensity etc.
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Thema-Typographic Maps Showing Crime Rate
KDE Map for West Lafayette, INshowing Crime Activity
Thema-Typographic Map Statistical variable visualized is
Crime Rate
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Thema-Typographic Maps in SVG
• Scaling individual characters: Internally we need to calculate where characters end on a path in 2D Space. This helps in following ways:
• Correct Lookup of Mapping Variable in Spatial Dataset• # of characters required to fill the path can be calculated• Stroke width of the background mask is now defined as an average of
the minimum and maximum font size
Other Applications: Traffic Intensity, Demographics, political data can be overlaid on a typographic map
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Conclusions and Future Work
• Automatic Generation of Typographic Maps for any Geographic Region within seconds
• ‘Thema-Typographic Maps’: Combines Typographic Maps technique with spatial datasets
Future Work:• Spatial data features as a means of visualizing data• Support Navigation, drilling down and changing map layout
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Acknowledgements• AxisMaps for their helpful feedback/discussions and permission
to use their Typographic Map image in our paper
• This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s VACCINE Center under Award no.
103659 / 2009-ST-061-CI0001 and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency under Award no. HDTRA 1-10-1-0083
Thank you
[Web Service Client]
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~safzal/typomaps.html
Shehzad [email protected]
Spatial Text Visualization Using
Automatic Typographic Maps