Davis-Holland
Cartography and Story Maps
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Bringing Data & Stories to Life
The best ideas, projects, and innovations are those that are clearly understood and embraced by partners and audiences alike.
At Davis-Holland Consulting, our sole focus is to help our clients visualize data and tell their stories through maps and story maps that inspire people to get involved and make a difference.
We combine the science and art of mapmaking along with the tool of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to bring your data and stories to life in print maps and interactive, online story maps.
Our work has been featured in curated galleries, books, and videos by the leading GIS software company Esri and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Esri chose our Florida Civil Legal Aid story map as one of the top 18 out of a quarter of a million in Our Favorite Community-Produced Story Maps of 2017.
Created with SRLN for The Florida Bar Foundation
Mapmaking as a Communication and Storytelling Tool
Maps can help turn huge amounts of data into a brilliant, simple image. But picking the right way to visualize data isn't always as easy as you might think.
To make an effective map, you have to understand what the human eye sees most readily and how our brains interpret visual information. You have to define your message and audience. You have to put yourself in the reader's shoes to try to understand what they are used to seeing, what inferred meaning they may have, and how to make the data easily digestible.
Mapmaking is statistics, art, design, psychology, culture, communication and science all wrapped in one.
Story maps take it a step further by combining maps with interactivity, immersive images, video, and audio, and text to create compelling online stories.
Both are accessible, memorable, and impactful providing a new view of the world. They capture attention to celebrate places, raise awareness, or provide a call to action.
"It's not hard to make a beautiful map, but it's hard to make a map that explains something well." —New York Times
About
Alison Davis-Holland, CEO & Founder
Alison is a veteran cartographer and geographer whose visual thinking and gift for words have helped organizations tell their spatial stories. Clients value her ability to ask thoughtful questions and generate creative solutions that visualize complex information and capture their audience's attention.
With a Master's of Science in Geographic and Cartographic Sciences and skills in GIS, spatial analysis, writing, decision analysis, and design, she is a powerhouse visual storyteller.
The Company
Davis-Holland Consulting was launched in 2015 as a progressive GIS consulting company by entrepreneur Alison. After 20 years working in geographic information systems at major international consulting firms, she founded the company to enable all organizations big and small to leverage the same GIS and mapping technology to tell their spatial stories.
We utilize the full suite of Esri ArcGIS and ArcGIS Online tools and custom programming to turn your vision into reality. We have given a voice to diverse causes including the environment, biodiversity, history, art, and social justice and are looking forward to supporting more good causes.
Featured Work
Our work has been featured in:
Esri's curated Story Map Gallery and Maps for Public Policy
2019 book entitled Mapping the Nation: GIS Making a Difference Now - Locally, Nationally, Globally
2018 story entitled Location Technology Helps the Legally Vulnerable After Disasters
Self-Represented Litigation Network's Map Gallery
Some Story Maps from Our Portfolio:
Explore
View our story map portfolio here.
Recent Press
Listen to the radio show on SoundCloud➠
The art and science of communicating with maps Go to article ➠
Helping Courts and Civil Legal Aid Understand the People They Serve Go to video ➠
Contact Us
Want help bringing your data and stories to life?
We would love to hear about it. Drop us a line at alison@davisholland.com to get started.