Cartographic Strategies for Airline Advertising

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4486979
AutoresDouglas K Fleming (autor correspondente)
Ano1984
Volume74
Fascículo1
Páginas76
Data de publicação1984-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/214762
OpenAlexW2323029659
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11

N EITHER the logic of ancient Greek philosophers nor the certainties of modern science have permanently dispelled illusions of a flat earth.1 Mental pictures of the earth easily lapse to two dimensions and then acquire the various biases of flat maps that must distort certain spatial properties so as to preserve others. Shape, size, and directions are the properties most commonly involved. In the 1940s a global war and the then new era of long-range air flight required fresh perspectives on continental relationships. J. P. Van Zandt, writing in 1944, deplored the overexposure to world maps on the Mercator projection whose grotesque distortions have colored our international thinking.2 He proposed a base map that would show global air-traffic patterns on an azimuthal projection centered somewhere in France and that would circumscribe what he termed the Principal Hemisphere.3 A decade later, K. R. Sealy used this same hemispheric image in his study of air-transportation patterns.4 Other scholars noted that azimuthal projections have embedded distortions so that a change of projection means an exchange of one set of objections for another.5 Despite exposure to an ever-widening variety of projections and sophisticated graphic techniques, the mind lapses easily and instinctively to a twodimensional picture, shaped by what has been seen in the field and on flat maps. A cartographer can either use these preconceptions or try to change them, whichever approach better conveys the intended geographical message. In this article I explore the ways that advertisements for airlines present geographic fact either by relying on familiar Mercatorlike imagery or by attempting to alter mental maps of the world. I have extracted the visual and verbal geographies from several prominent advertisements to illustrate and to evaluate the methods of delivering spatial information. Two assumptions govern my analysis. Firstly, I assume that viewers of these advertisements have mental biases that derive from habitual exposure

Advertising · Business · Geography · Geographic Information Systems Studies · Historical Geography and Cartography