Mapping is a tradition dating back thousands of years , and it might seem like theres no ground left to cover. But cartographers tools still offer new and unique ways to order and understand the world.

In their book Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary , Harvard Graduate School of Design professors Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim break down the conventions of mapping through the centuries and show how contemporary designers can use them.

The book, released this summer by Princeton Architectural Press, stems from a 2013 exhibition at Harvard that was meant to provoke architecture and design students to look to cartography for different tools and creative ways to represent the landscape in drawings, according to Desimini.

Part of the idea of the project is to expose all of the variations and encourage people to see the world in as many ways as possible, and maybe try to draw it in different ways, so design is kind of not being lazy or doing similar things over and over again, but [matches] the diversity of the world, Desimini said.

In one map, the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio used a technique called land classification that uses colors, symbols or patterns to differentiate real or potential land uses. In the studios map of New Orleans, proposed restoration and protection strategies are color-coded for example, dashed white lines represent sites for wastewater treatment and cypress forest regeneration, blue indicates where sediment-diversion tactics can be used, and yellow areas represent relocated neighborhood development away from marshlands.