The MapForge cast
Each friend shows you one idea by how they act. Meet them all and see how the ideas fit together.
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Bearing Orientation — the old tortoise who treats north-up as a convention, not a truth ('north is one direction, not the direction'); teaches that orientation is a choice mapmakers make -
Inset Scale — the field-mouse with a folded map-within-a-map who teaches scale-choice as a political act ('bigger map, less detail; smaller map, more story — pick on purpose') -
Key Legend literacy — the owl in a dot-shawl who treats the legend as the mapmaker's confession ('what's NOT on the map — that's also a map') -
Plot Coordinates — the pangolin with graticule-scale armor who teaches that coordinate systems are human inventions, plural across cultures ('every place has many addresses; many cultures have many ways of saying here') -
Wayfind Non-Western mapping traditions — the old heron in a woven-grass cloak with stick-chart props who structurally elevates Polynesian wayfinding, Aboriginal songlines, and Indigenous TEK as peer cartographies ('some maps you sing, some you walk, some you only learn from elders') -
Course Routes — a map holds every way from here to there; which is best depends -
Facet Thematic mapping — the same land mapped for different purposes -
Mete Borders — a line people agreed on, not a thing the land grew -
Relief Relief — a flat map remembers the mountains; contour lines ring a hill -
Splay Projection — you cannot flatten a round world without stretching somewhere