Whenever I invite someone to talk at our monthly “education and outreach” colloquia I seem to be out of town when the talk is scheduled. Sure enough, last Wednesday when Cynthia Brewer was here (at Goddard Space Flight Center, near Washington, DC) I was in Los Angeles.
Dr. Brewer is a geography professor at Penn State (as well as an author of several books on design and cartography: Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users and Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users) specializing in research on effective map design, especially the use of color in maps. Since we make a lot of maps, ColorBrewer, her on-line tool for selecting color schemes, has been an invaluable tool. By all accounts she gave an excellent talk, I’m sorry I missed it.
