Zibo Map of Culture and Tourism
淄博市文旅地图

Best Cartographic Design in 2023 NACIS Map Competition; Atlas of Design Vol.7; Cartography SIG Excellence Award in Esri UC
北美地图信息协会2023地图竞赛最佳地图设计奖，
入选《设计地图集（第七卷）》，Esri用户大会地图学特别兴趣小组优秀奖

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My homeland, the City of Zibo in China, became a nationwide hotspot in the spring of 2023 due to its distinctive barbecue cuisine and honest, simple folk customs. To help promote tourism, I designed this map to introduce the history and culture of this beautiful city, showcasing its natural features, tourist attractions, public transportation, and some fun facts. The initial version was created in Chinese; in subsequent revisions, some information was translated into English to serve international readers.

This map is a reference map enriching with cultural and tourism information. The topographic base map combines hillshades and stratified colors, presenting the natural landscape’s beauty. It clearly illustrates the topographic characteristics, with higher elevation in the south and lower in the north, setting an elegant visual tone for terrain representation, with Zibo's major peaks and some suburban hills labeled.

In terms of symbol design, important tourism and transportation information is prioritized. This includes transportation hubs (railway stations, transit centers, airport shuttle hubs, highway toll gates, and service areas), transportation lines (high-speed railway and highway networks), and city bus "Barbecue Lines" and "Tourism Lines" specially designed in metro transit style. The map categorizes tourist attractions into different levels and types, such as museums, historic sites, and other popular spots.

This map includes two insets: The top right corner features a locator map of Shandong Province, showing the administrative boundaries of prefecture-level cities and essential physical geography. The bottom left corner shows a map of downtown Zibo, marking the main roads, business districts, featured barbecue restaurants, and a fun fact in local toponymy.

This map subtly integrates historical and cultural elements into its graphic design, such as barbecue kebabs combined with the map scales, ancient knife-shape money and a symbolic sculpture in railway station plaza as the north arrows, revealing Zibo’s rich history as the capital city of Qi State (1046 - 221 B.C.), one of the most populated Chinese cities at that time. The design of the landmark Haidai Tower, featuring “Zhongshuge”, known as the most beautiful bookstore in China, is specially showcased.

As a native of Zibo, this map holds great significance to me. I literally cannot make any other map with the same level of confidence, as it is tied to countless personal memories. During the data collection process, I was so amazed by the rapid and substantial development of my hometown in terms of infrastructure and attractions. With deep love and passion, I respectfully present my map as a gift to this lovely land, Zibo.



See an example of represented terrain below.

Below is the inset map of Zibo Central Urban Area (Zhangdian District), with minor revisions to generally work as an independent map as well.

Below is the inset map of Shandong Provice, with minor revisions to generally work as an independent map as well.

I presented this map during the 2023 annual conference of North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), and won the Best Cartographic Design Award (tie) in Student Map and Poster Competition.

This map is also selected into the Atlas of Design, Volume VII, published by the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS).

And as the Honorable Mention artwork in UW-Madison 15th Annual Digital Salon, the large printed version of this map is displayed at the College Library of UW-Madison.

Zibo's barbeque became a phenomenal hotspot in China during the spring of 2023. To better advertize Zibo for the May Day (Labor Day Holiday) in 2024, my Zibo Map of Culture and Tourism was featured on two local public media platforms: Zibo Luzhong Morning Post (Dazhong News Group) 大众报业-鲁中晨报, and Zibo Daily Newspaper 淄博日报社, reprint by Tencent News. The WeChat Channel video clip by Zibo Daily Newspaper got about 1000 "Like", 400 "Repost", and 600 "Favorite". I made some short video clips introducing this Zibo map, and posted on several social media platforms (mostly on WeChat Video Channel), and got about 12K views so far. To better promote the tourism, the featuring video is displayed on the giant screen at Times Square at NYC.



View the Wikipedia Page to learn more about the City of Zibo.

During Esri User Conference in July 2024, this map was selected by Esri's President Jack Dangermond to be featured during the Plenary Session.

This map also won the Cartograhy Special Interest Group Excellent Award during the Esri User Conference 2024.