maestronw announces pro bono gis offer for whatcom county nonprofits
Here at Maestro Northwest, our mission is
To further our mission we are reaching out to local non-profits to provide pro bono services to worthy projects in Whatcom County, Washington. If you have a project that could benefit from our services, we’d love to hear from you! Just fill out this brief form and email your project proposal to info@maestronw.com, and feel free to include any additional documents that might help us understand your needs.
We will try to fulfill all requests, but may have to limit our services if the response volume exceeds our capacity. GIS is a highly specialized field and most non-profits can’t afford to hire full-time consultants or train their staff. We’re here to fill the gap, helping Whatcom County organizations become world class through technological innovation!
| to provide excellence in cartography and spatial analysis, specializing in the GIS needs of the non-profit, government, and business sectors of Whatcom County. Maestro NW actively builds partnerships with organizations whose objective is to better the local economy, community and environment.” |
To further our mission we are reaching out to local non-profits to provide pro bono services to worthy projects in Whatcom County, Washington. If you have a project that could benefit from our services, we’d love to hear from you! Just fill out this brief form and email your project proposal to info@maestronw.com, and feel free to include any additional documents that might help us understand your needs.
We will try to fulfill all requests, but may have to limit our services if the response volume exceeds our capacity. GIS is a highly specialized field and most non-profits can’t afford to hire full-time consultants or train their staff. We’re here to fill the gap, helping Whatcom County organizations become world class through technological innovation!
Digitized Maps Revolutionize Farm Planning -Not just for the Big Guys Anymore
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Our article on digitized farm mapping was featured in Washington Farm Bureau News! Check it out by clicking the thumbnail to the left. Find those maps featured in the article for download in our Portfolio. |
GIS in the world of graphic design
The Maestro team has been hitting the streets- talking to graphic designers about MAPS! Here's what we've heard:
- Graphic designers generally DO NOT like making maps! And we understand why!
Maps can be very simple, or very intricate, depending on their purpose. Sometimes it's crucial that they are extremely accurate- and sometimes they can be artistic representations of locations. No matter what- they take a LONG TIME to produce in a program like Adobe Illustrator!
For the graphic artist spending hours and hours reproducing an online map for print productions: we're here to help.
Step 1: We have the data - so you don't have to guess or reproduce anything
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Step 2: Maestro does the basic stuff for you.
Step 3: Getting it to you in the format you're used to. Lines, points, polygons and raster images from ArcMap all translate beautifully into the Adobe environment. Layers are preserved so you can edit a layer or group (streets, for example) all at once.
Step 4: With a few tweaks and your own creative twists, the map is uniquely YOURS! No recurring royalty fees, just a one-time production cost and it's out of our hands and into your print project!
For the graphic artist spending hours and hours reproducing an online map for print productions: we're here to help.
Step 1: We have the data - so you don't have to guess or reproduce anything
.
Step 2: Maestro does the basic stuff for you.
Step 3: Getting it to you in the format you're used to. Lines, points, polygons and raster images from ArcMap all translate beautifully into the Adobe environment. Layers are preserved so you can edit a layer or group (streets, for example) all at once.
Step 4: With a few tweaks and your own creative twists, the map is uniquely YOURS! No recurring royalty fees, just a one-time production cost and it's out of our hands and into your print project!
Beyond google maps
When we, here at Maesto Northwest, explain what our company does, a common response is: "Oh- like Google Maps?" We often answer, "Yes... but better."
Google Maps, and other applications like it, has certainly brought the Geographic Information trade into the light of day. Aerial imagery for nearly every inch of the earth's surface is available for free- sometimes at an unsettlingly high resolution. So why would a company specialize in custom maps, when the technology is already at everyone's fingertips?
It all starts with the invention of the Mercator world map projection. Most people are familiar with the wall map depicting Greenland as a continent as large as Africa, and other wildly bloated extreme northern and southern land masses. This is the same projection used by Google to incorporate the entire world into a single interactive map. This projection is commonly criticized in the geographic community, because it enormously distorts all of the meridians to the north and south of the equator.
Greenland isn't even close to the size of Africa! In fact, it has approximately the same land area as Mexico. What does this mean for Google Maps? While they are excellent for a general view of a region, and a wonderful tool for finding your way from point A to point B, their precision is off by huge margins all over the world. If you were a farmer, wishing to use a Google Map to calculate the size of your field, your calculation would be off by potentially hundreds of feet!
"Orthorectified" aerial imagery is necessary for precision mapping and planning. And the Arc software environment, or similar programs, are needed to interpret and analyze such data. These maps accurately convey critical information to the environmental and physical attributes of a landbase. Data formatted for use in the GIS environment, generated by Federal, State and Local agencies, can be overlayed on the orthophoto, displaying patterns that can only be seen in a spatial visualization.
Mercator is just one of hundreds of projections for world maps. An impressively comprehensive gallery of these projections exists here.
Google Maps, and other applications like it, has certainly brought the Geographic Information trade into the light of day. Aerial imagery for nearly every inch of the earth's surface is available for free- sometimes at an unsettlingly high resolution. So why would a company specialize in custom maps, when the technology is already at everyone's fingertips?
It all starts with the invention of the Mercator world map projection. Most people are familiar with the wall map depicting Greenland as a continent as large as Africa, and other wildly bloated extreme northern and southern land masses. This is the same projection used by Google to incorporate the entire world into a single interactive map. This projection is commonly criticized in the geographic community, because it enormously distorts all of the meridians to the north and south of the equator.
Greenland isn't even close to the size of Africa! In fact, it has approximately the same land area as Mexico. What does this mean for Google Maps? While they are excellent for a general view of a region, and a wonderful tool for finding your way from point A to point B, their precision is off by huge margins all over the world. If you were a farmer, wishing to use a Google Map to calculate the size of your field, your calculation would be off by potentially hundreds of feet!
"Orthorectified" aerial imagery is necessary for precision mapping and planning. And the Arc software environment, or similar programs, are needed to interpret and analyze such data. These maps accurately convey critical information to the environmental and physical attributes of a landbase. Data formatted for use in the GIS environment, generated by Federal, State and Local agencies, can be overlayed on the orthophoto, displaying patterns that can only be seen in a spatial visualization.
Mercator is just one of hundreds of projections for world maps. An impressively comprehensive gallery of these projections exists here.
