Cynthia Brewer

Cindy Brewer is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State. 

She is a Professor of Geography and IST, and she has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1994. Her research and teaching focused on cartographic design. She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and 60 additional publications and cartographic design resources, generating more than 7,000 citations. 

Brewer has authored four books, including the popular Designing Better Maps with the 3rd edition now published by Esri Press (2024). Her contributions to cartography have been recognized with the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal from the International Cartographic Association (ICA) in 2023, the O. M. Miller Cartographic Medal from the American Geographical Society (AGS) in 2019, and the Henry Gannett Award for Exceptional Contributions to Topographic Mapping from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2013 for her work with their Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS).

She is especially well known for her ColorBrewer online tool for selecting map color schemes. Brewer’s research interests include cartographic communication and visualization, map design, color theory, atlas production, multi-scale mapping, and topographic map series. 

Prior to joining Penn State, Brewer was an assistant professor of geography at San Diego State University and a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara while she was a doctoral student. She earned her doctorate in geography with emphasis in cartography from Michigan State University in 1991, supervised by Dr. Judy M. Olson.