Do you enjoy looking at maps? Most people DO NOT.
Conservationists love geography and we love maps, don’t we?
I know I do. I have a vast collection of paper maps, and I am heavy, heavy, heavy user of Google Maps, Google Earth, GPS systems, etc. I spend a lot of time looking at maps, selecting zip codes and county boundaries to approximate watershed boundaries, and compiling market research data to tell a story about the people who live there and how you can reach them with your message. I really enjoy it!
And, truth be told, the whole point of this Water Words That Work business venture is my business trips take me to interesting corners of the country, where I can see my my clients’ fascinating work, and write it all off as a legitimate business expense. That’s my idea of work/life balance right there: Looking at maps and planning trips.
So — I understand why conservation organizations want their logos to be maps, when you want to name their organizations after geographic features, when you want to fill the space on your home pages and brochures with maps. But I have learned through both experience and research that this is actually not a good idea.
Here’s why. Taken a whole, everyday citizens are astonishingly, resoundingly, stunningly disinterested in geography. In a 2006 study on Americans’ geographic literacy, the National Geographic Society found:
- Six in ten (63%) cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East, despite near-constant news coverage since the U.S. invasion of March 2003.
- Two-thirds (67%) can find Louisiana on a U.S. map and half (52%) can find Mississippi – leaving a third or more who cannot find these states, in spite of months of intensive media coverage of the 2005 hurricanes and their aftermath.
- Moreover, half (50%) cannot find New York State, even though it is the third most populous state in the union, after California and Texas.
And here’s the real reason for those shocking numbers: Most people think geography is boring! Most people think maps are boring! When we push maps on people when we want them to take action for conservation, we are actually stepping on our own feet because we are boring them.
What most people are interested in is other people. That’s why faces are high on the list of Foolproof Photos. When I have the Due Diligence Test Panel review communications efforts from conservation organizations, the highest scores for images invariably do to pieces that have big striking pictures of peoples faces, like the one below:
For most, this image is far more eye-catching than a map
Every time you find yourself saying “I could put a map here,” stop and take a deep breath. Then ask yourself “could I put a face here?” instead.
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Bah. How else are you supposed to show the cumulative impacts of things like hog lagoons? How do you make people care about issues that affect them and their water supply without showing that the problems exist in their own back yards?
I love maps.
Love, love, love, love maps.
Maps can do the trick IF the map has what you need on it to tell the story. Too often we put way too much information on a map and expect people to know what we’re driving at. hence a narrative is almost always needed and that defeats the purpose of the image, right…a picture is worth a thousand words.
I love maps and I love faces…but I’ll be honest. To get a map is way easier than getting someone to pose for a picture.
I agree and I LOVE maps as well but this couldn’t have had better timing for me. I am putting together a display for a local fair and was just about to put yet another map of the watershed and the impacts associated with it on one of the panels thinking – of course its a good statement…Perhaps not. In order for us to met our new MS-4 permit requirements we need people to take action and it seems a map will only show people an area that they they couldn’t recognize anyway, even though it is their own backyard. Thanks for this submission. I thought maps were king!
I love maps! Can’t we have both maps and pictures?
Oh, of course you can have both! But it is the faces that will attract the attention.
I do a lot of public speaking/teachers with lay leaders and citizens, and I have found that they are energized by an exercise where I put a map of the area with watersheds on the wall, and assist everyone with putting a sticker on their home. There have been some epiphanies, and people love to do this with their kids. It really helps them understand the idea of a watershed to find where the water from their front yard drains. That said, I guess the point is that maps can be exciting as a teaching tool, an opening-your-eyes tool, WITH assistance – I agree that as an eye-catching graphic, perhaps not so. But let’s not lose sight of sharing our excitement with maps – people love to do something new!!
I also love maps, but have found most people don’t use or like them. When using a map with a group, I always start the exercise with, “Find where we are on this map”, or find your house on this map,” so my audience can relate the map to something they know. But overall maps are not very useful for a message to the public.
I’m a big fan of using maps to grab attention and otherwise provide useful illustration. I think it’s worth noting that perhaps maps work better than faces (or at least as well) with certain audiences. Yes, in the general population, geographic literacy and interest is pretty low, but a lot of the groups I target in my conservation work are outdoors-type people who will always look at a map with great interest. For purely public outreach, it’s good to know about the effectiveness of faces vs. maps, but I’m going to keep using maps every chance I get when communicating with my organization’s members and much of our constituency. I’ve seen the metrics on e-mail messages, our website and Facebook/Twitter efforts… maps get more clicks than just about anything else.
I’ll also echo what Tara Collins said above: too often, the maps we use are over-complicated. I’ve found it’s a constant battle particularly when I’m lucky enough to work with a GIS professional. It seems most of their training is about how much info they can cram onto one map, where the map that is the most effective communications piece tells a very simply story.
Anyway, I’m going to keep this in mind and try to use more faces, but I’m sure not giving up maps!
I agree with this in general, but we have had excellent success with a very simple map on a large outdoor banner, that shows the middle section of the United states, with the Mississippi River outlined in blue and the ten states that it runs through or borders. The only labels on the map are the states names and the river is highlighted in blue. Basically we are trying to help people in Mississippi river communities and towns understand that this river in their backyard also touches millions of other people, and that the river connects them all. And it works. We frequently get comments such as “I had no idea the river runs through so many states. And that is exactly what we are trying to teach people. Next we ask them to take action. But the map is how we can successfully draw them in.