Art, said Picasso, is a lie that makes us realize the truth. So is a map. We

Art, said Picasso, is a lie that makes us realize the truth, so is a map. We do not usually associate the precise work of the mapmaker with a fanciful object of art. Yet a map has many qualities that a painting or a poem has. It is truth realized in a symbolic way, holding meanings it does not express on the surface. And like work of art, it requires imaginative reading.
    Thus, map and reality are not, and cannot be, identical. No aspect of map use is so obvious yet so often overlooked. Most map reading mistakes occur because the user forgets this vital fact and expect a one-to-one correspondence between map and reality.
    A map, like a painting, is just one special version of reality. To understand a painting, you must have some idea of the medium which was used by the artist. You wouldn’t expect a water color to look anything like an oil painting or a charcoal drawing, even if the subject matter of all three were the same. In the same way, the techniques used to create maps will greatly influence the final representation. As a map-reader, you should always be aware of the invisible hand of the mapmaker. If the entire map-making process operates at its full potential, communication takes place between the mapmaker and the user. The mapmaker translates reality into the clearest possible picture under the circumstances, and the map-reader converts this picture back into an impression of the environment. For such communication to take place, the map-reader as well as the mapmaker must know something about how maps are created.