Cynthia Ann Brewer (born 1960) is an American cartographer, author, and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

. Brewer's specialty relates to visibility and

color theory Color theory, or more specifically traditional color theory, is a historical body of knowledge describing the behavior of colors, namely in color mixing, color contrast effects, color harmony, color schemes and color symbolism. Modern color th ...

cartography Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

. In 2023, she was awarded the International Cartographic Society's highest honor, the

Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal The International Cartographic Association (ICA) (, ''ACI'') is an organization formed of national member organizations, to provide a forum for issues and techniques in cartography and geographic information science (GIScience). ICA was founded ...

, for her distinguished contribution to the field. Her web, print, and

colorblind Color blindness, color vision deficiency (CVD) or color deficiency is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. The severity of color blindness ranges from mostly unnoticeable to full absence of color perception. Color bl ...

-friendly sets of colors, known as the Brewer palettes, have been used by numerous projects.Stephen D. Gardner, 2005
Evaluation of the ColorBrewer Color Schemes for Accommodation of Map Readers with Impaired Color Vision
(6.1MB PDF) She is the creator of the online color palette tool ColorBrewer. Brewer has worked as a map and atlas design consultant for the

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

National Center for Health Statistics The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is a U.S. government agency that provides statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the public health of the American people. It is a unit of the Centers for Disease Control ...

, and

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

. She teaches courses in introductory cartography and map design. She also works on

topographic map In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large- scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but histori ...

design, multi-scale mapping, generalization, and atlas mapping. She has been influential as a theorist for map representations and

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not ...

professionals.

Education

She graduated from

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...

(Ontario, Canada) in 1979 and the

University of Guelph The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...

(Ontario, Canada) in 1983. She did her master's degree in geography with emphasis in cartography at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

, 1983 to 1986, presenting a thesis titled ''The Development of Process-Printed Munsell Charts for Selecting Map Colors''. After a year at

University of California at Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers college, UCSB joine ...

, she obtained her doctorate from Michigan State University in 1991. Her dissertation was ''Prediction of Surround-Induced Changes in Map Color Appearance''.

Academic career

She was visiting lecturer at the

, Department of Geography during the year 1986/87. On completing her doctorate she was assistant professor, for three years (1991 to 1994) at

San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Diego, California, United States. Founded in 1897, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CS ...

. She joined the

, Department of Geography in 1994 and has been professor since 2007 and was head of the department from 2014 to 2021. She has been a faculty member of the Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS), U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Interior, since 2008.

ColorBrewer

ColorBrewer is an online tool developed in 2002 for selecting

thematic map A thematic map is a type of map that portrays the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter (theme) in a geographic area. This usually involves the use of map symbols to Geovisualization, visualize selected properties of geographic fe ...

color schemes based on Brewer's palettes. The ColorBrewer palettes have uses beyond cartography; in 2018 climatologist Ed Hawkins chose ColorBrewer reds and blues for

warming stripes Warming stripes (sometimes referred to as climate stripes, climate timelines or stripe graphics) are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Wa ...

graphics portraying

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

Publications

Books

* * *

Articles

* * * * *
An Evaluation of Color Selections to Accommodate Map Users with Color-Vision Impairments

Awards and honors

* Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal, International Cartographic Society, 2023 *

Osborn Maitland Miller Medal The Osborn Maitland Miller Cartographic Medal was established in 1968 by the American Geographical Society Council. The Osborn Maitland Miller Cartographic Medal honors "outstanding contributions in the field of cartography or geodesy". History O ...

, American Geographical Society, 2019

References

External links

Official website

Personal website

ColorBrewer2.org
— tool for selecting color palettes {{DEFAULTSORT:Brewer, Cynthia Living people 21st-century American geographers Pennsylvania State University faculty Color scientists Geographic information scientists 1960 births McMaster University alumni University of Guelph alumni Michigan State University alumni Women cartographers