Why North Is Up: Map Conventions and Where They Came From

Many people have a love of maps. But what lies behind the process of map-making? How have cartographers through the centuries developed their craft and established a language of maps which helps them to better represent our world and help users to understand it?

This book tells the story of how widely accepted mapping conventions originated and evolved—from map orientation, projections, typography, and scale, to the use of color, symbols, ways of representing relief, and the treatment of bo...