mapmaking patterns

Someone who has lived in a place for some period of time will use certain aspects of the physical environment to orient their mental map. Alternatively, someone new to a place may use a map to develop this reference frame. The map will influence how they assemble things that they perceive into their mental map.

Orient the map to facilitate the development of a person’s reference image. This will depend on map scale and purpose. For a small scale reference or thematic map, a north-up orientation (for northern hemisphere) will facilitate using the graticule as the referencing image. On large scale maps, however, people are more likely to use environmental structure as their referencing image — mountains, shoreline, dominant roads, etc. Orient your map so that these salient environmental structures form the dominant axis of your map.