Entries open for Map Design Competition

The competition is open to all mapmakers for maps completed or published during the calendar year of 2024. Students are particularly encouraged to apply for the award.

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, visual hierarchy, clarity, use of color, and subject matter.

Categories

• Student Categories:
  • Arthur Robinson Award for Best Printed Map: A map or map series designed specifically for print or static media.
  • David Woodward Award for Best Digital Map: A map or series of related maps designed specifically for digital media (i.e., interactive and/or animated for the Web or a mobile app).
• Professional Categories:
  • 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.
  • Interactive/Digital: Interactive or animated maps or Story Maps that are made for the web, or as plug-ins to Windows and MAC computers, or as mobile apps.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Benefits

• Winning entries will be displayed at a number of national and international professional functions and digital images of winning entries will be provided (with permission) to educators and teachers as examples of excellent map design for their students.
• Best of Show, Winning entries (in each category), and Honorable Mention entries (in each category) of printed maps will then become part of the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Note that the Library of Congress is unable to accept digital maps at this time. Maps provided to the Library of Congress will be made available to patrons and researchers for on-site access and fair use copies. Treatment of all maps received from the Competition will comply with U.S. Copyright law.

Prize Information 

• Each student award consists of a cash prize ($500) and a copy of Avenza MAPublisher.

Eligibility Criteria

• 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 verified via the instructor.

For more information, visit CaGIS.