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About CaGIS Map Competition
An Invitation to All Mapmakers
The Cartography and Geographic Information Society is pleased to announce the 37th Annual Map Design Competition.
The competition is open to all map-makers in the United States and Canada for maps completed or published during 2009. Students are particularly encouraged to apply for the awards sponsored by the National Geographic Society and Avenza-MAPublisher. The deadline for 37th annual competition is January 29, 2010.
About the Competition
The purpose of the competition is to promote interest in map design and to recognize significant design advances in cartography. The focus of this competition is design; therefore, judging is based on cartographic design criteria, such as creativity, text (spelling and grammar, too), balance, unity, clarity, use of color, and subject matter.
Student awards are sponsored by the National Geographic Society, Avenza-MAPublisher, and ESRI. Each student award consists of a cash prize ($500), a National Geographic atlas, a student license of MAPublisher (worth $249), and a certificate of award. Runners-up will receive a beautiful National Geographic map or atlas. Student mapmakers in a certificate, diploma, or degree program (bachelor, masters, doctorate) must have produced their entries with student facilities as part of an accredited course. Student entries must be signed by a course instructor.
Entries will displayed at a number of national and international professional functions and will then become part of the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Scans of winning entries will also be provided (with permission) to educators and teachers as examples of excellent map design for their students.
In order to better support student map makers in this competition, CaGIS has decided to waive the studnet entry fee (formerly $10.00). To help compensate, and because this competition does not generate revenue, we have raised the fee for the professional entries to $30.00. We hope that our professional cartographers will agree taht this increase is a worthwhile subsidy for the students.
Categories of Award
Professional Category
- Best of Show The map or book selected from the winners of the categories below that is judged to be the best of this year's entries.
- Best of Category
- Reference: A map whose objective is to show the location of a variety of different features. The focus of a reference map is on accurate depiction at a given scale of the location of individual environmental features.
- Thematic: A map whose objective is to illustrate a theme or the relationship among several themes. The focus of a thematic map is on the structure of the distribution rather than on location.
- Book/Atlas: Atlases and books use original maps as the primary (in the case of an atlas) or a significant (in the case of a book) communication device.
- Recreation/Travel: A map designed to assist readers in pursuit of recreation or travel, such as road maps, trail maps, and maps of parks or natural areas.
- Interactive Digital: A map designed for digital media (Internet, CD, DVD). Maps in this category include some level of interactivity, such as selection and transformation, or animation.
- Other: This category is for submissions that do not fit into any other category. Judges reserve the right to assign entries to another category if they feel it is appropriate and will offer an award only for an exceptional map that does not correspond with the other categories.
Student Category
National Geographic Society/Avenza-MAPublisher Awards
- Arthur Robinson Award for Best Printed Map: A map or map series designed specifically for print media.
- David Woodward Award for Best Electronic Map: A map or series of related maps designed specifically for electronic media (i.e., CD, DVD, the Web, etc.)
How to Enter the 37th Competition
The 37th CaGIS Annual Map Design Competition will be judged in Februrary 2010. The deadline for submissions is January 29, 2010 for maps completed or published in 2009.
Submit three copies of entries in the Professional category and two in the Student category. Digital entries should be submitted on CD-Rom, together with color laser copies of home page and one or two subsequent pages. Provide the URLs of digital entries on application form. Get the entry form now!
The fees are $30 per professional map. No fees are applied to student entries. Please send entries to:
ACSM Map Competition
6 Montgomery Village Avenue
Suite 403
Gaithersburg, MD 20879
For further information, contact ilse.genovese@acsm.net or call (240) 632-9716 ext.109.
Past Map Design Competition Winners
36th Map Design Competition (2008)