Cultural Regions of the U.S.
A map of my own personal approximation of the cultural regions of the United States.
City and state Data from Natural Earth, designed with ArcMap and Adobe Illustrator.
The subject of the map was influenced from studies in my cultural geography courses at Rowan University, including the book Nine Nations of North America.
I designed with the core principles of cartographic theory and data visualization in mind. I used contrasting primary colors for the different qualitative data pieces (the major regions; Pacific, Midwest, Northeast, etc.), and shades of the same color to reflect a degree of shared similarity within sub-regions (Cascadia, Jefferson, North Coast, etc.) along with the circled numbers to assist with reading and identifying colors.
The blurring of the boundaries between the minor regions was a conscious design choice meant to reflect the transitioning, blending, and overlapping of cultures (what is culture anyway!? is a question for another time) across the geographic landscape— but I mostly implemented it due to the inherent “fuzziness” of mapping an intangible phenomenon. This is a design choice I’ve seen employed in contemporary maps attempting to show the location or sovereign territory of kingdoms, empires, etc. in Medieval or Ancient history, usually in history textbooks or Wikipedia.
