Before we explore distance cartograms, let us first understand what a cartogram is. A cartogram is a combination of a chart/diagram and a map
and represents data in a way that makes it easier for the audience to grasp the point. Such cartograms have been in use since the mid-1800s.
Nowadays, popular cartograms are of two types:
-
Area Cartograms: These cartograms represent map data by resizing them to match other data – for example, if maps were resized
to population rather than area, then the world map would have over-sized map representations of countries such as China and India, as shown in
Figure 1, below.
Source: Global Geographic Topic - Population Patterns - Patterns
Figure 1: Area Cartogram
- Distance Cartograms: These cartograms are not really conventional maps. Rather these use concentric circles to represent
distance, and also earnings, time, etc.
We will not explore the creatio of Area Cartograms in PowerPoint since that's out of the scope of what you would be expected to create within
a slide program! However, it's entirely and easily possible to create a Distance Cartogram using PowerPoint's native Shapes and the
Merge Shape commands.
How to Draw Distance Cartogram in PowerPoint?
Follow these steps to draw a Distance Cartogram in PowerPoint:
-
Launch PowerPoint. Most of the time PowerPoint will open with a new slide in a presentation.
Change the Slide Layout to Blank.
-
Now select the Oval shape from the Shapes gallery.
-
And then click anywhere on the slide. This will
insert a circle shape in a predefined size
(typically 1 inch x 1 inch), as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Click to insert circle shape
Draw more circles as required. Then resize your circles so that they are sequentially larger by a constant value.
For this tutorial, we drew and resized five perfect circles – each subsequent circle was larger by 1 inch, as shown in
Figure 3, below.
Figure 3: Five perfect circles larger than each other by 1 inch
-
Select all circles,
as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Select all the circle shapes
-
Thereafter, align all selected circles together by choosing the
Align Middle and Align Center options to end up with what you see in
Figure 5.
Figure 5: Selected circle shapes aligned to middle and center
-
Group all the circles as one object as shown in
Figure 6.
Figure 6: Group all circles into one object
-
Select the grouped object and align it to the center of the slide.
-
Now ungroup all the circles, as shown in
Figure 7.
Figure 7: Ungroup Circles
-
With the shapes selected, as shown in Figure 7 above, access the Drawing Tools Format tab of the
Ribbon (highlighted in
red within Figure 8). Within the Drawing Tools Format tab, click the
Merge Shapes |
Fragment option. At the time of writing, the Fragment
option was only available in PowerPoint 2013.
Figure 8: Shape Fragement
-
Now you will have perfectly cut donuts that you can recolor,
apply fills to, and represent as data. In Figure 9, we have
segregated these individual shapes so that you can see what we have achieved (compare with Figure 4).
Figure 9: Perfectly cut doughnut shapes
At this point you know how to create a basic distance cartogram. Next, let us explore how you can use the created structure of cartograms in
our
Distance Cartograms in PowerPoint 2013 - Part 2
tutorial.
