This week I was tasked with working on map design and typography, somewhat of a refresher from all the things that the GIS minor encompasses as far as cartographic design goes. The first map below was given to me in the form of a jumbled up mess of lines that represented roads, waterways and golf courses. I was given an excel file of coordinates for Recreation Centers saved as a .csv and tasked with joining the coordinates to my map on ArcPro. I was unable to smoothly transfer over my coordinates like I should have been. Most times with the simple click of the "add xy data" button the process is on it's way and problem free. Not this time, this time I was dealing with my new rec center features being projected about 200 miles south of where I needed them. After trying to reproject 10 times, even though my coordinate system and projections where the exact same, I was unsuccessful in adding the rec centers straight from their xy data. I had to manually input each coordinate into arcpro and add a new point to a new feature class I names "RecCenters" for all 20 rec centers. After this I cleaned up the map according to the 5 map design principles.
5 Map Design Principles
Visual Contrast – The colors of the map background and the page background are both aids in the visual contrast of this map. The study area and its features are easy to locate and are distinguished from the rest of the map elements. The features themselves on the map such as waterways and golf courses are also easily distinguished form one another.
Legibility – The map is easy to read and understand due to the simplicity and ease on the eyes when viewing the map. The symbols and sizes are effortlessly interpreted and the visual contrast increases legibility.
Figure-ground organization – With this map figure ground was established with the outlines of the features and the boldness of the lines. Such as with the waterways, you can see the definite difference between the feature and the county boundary layer under it. This allows the waterway feature to pop a little more. The Rec Center points are outlined with a color that contrasts the yellow backdrop well enough to draw attention.
Hierarchical organization – With the features on the map such as golf courses and waterways I attempted to create a balance between the two to show similar emphasis. The recreation centers are more of a focal point due to that being a popular area for tourist since it is in the metro area unlike some of the waterways and golf courses. The bottom layer, or Travis County, is in place as far as visual hierarchy is concerned. It does a great job conveying the area but not stealing attention.
Balance – By organizing the map elements I was able to create an impression of equilibrium on the page. I initially had issues with the length of the title and whether or not to run it in a single line across the top of the page or insert it in the panel to the right. The latter option worked better due to it creating this “balance” amongst the elements. The right panel looked empty without the title, it made the study area look very heavy.
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The next map was given to me in the form of a presentation map for a conservation group. They used it to show what areas of this part of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska was off limits to logging and timber harvest due to the protection zones for the riparian zones next to rivers and certain eagle nests that. This map was essentially turned around backwards and used to find the areas that were suitable for harvest, displaying the areas that were off limits in a contrasting color. This was used for the purpose of a report so I left the map in the portrait orientation to maintain the type of flow that reports tend to read by. The report shows the names of the lots and how much they are asking for purchase. I included at the bottom of the report the essentials for why the areas were off limits, consisting of class and buffer zone distances.
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This next map of San Francisco, California was an activity that allowed for me to brush up on my cartography skills, specifically typography. This map was created by zooming into the study site from a larger map where the parks, shoreline, water, and streets were already symbolized. I changed the colors of the features that were already on the map to make it easier for the text to legible when viewing the map. The idea was to create a hierarchy of the labels to allow a transition of importance. I manually added all of the labels on the map. The general areas such as Marin Peninsula and Sausalito are all
the same size and lower case except for the first letter. San Francisco is the
only exception, it is larger and bolder. I also included an arc to the line for
effect and a shadow. The water features are the same color blue, minus Lake
Merced, due to it being a lake, the contrast of the blue needed to be deeper in
order to work the background color. The Park Names class is displayed with a
green font to help relate the labels to them being parks. They are also all the
same font. Lincoln Park had to be turned and placed right offshore in the water
in order to fit. As far as landmarks, since there was only one, the Golden Gate
Bridge, I made it a bold lower case. It is by itself in the middle of the bay
so I don’t think there will be an issue with it sticking out. The topographic
features were done with all caps and some increased letter spacing. I increased
the boldness of the Twin Peaks location due to the popularity.
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These last two maps will be presented together for the blog's purpose. The first map is a depiction of Mexico's Boundary and the major rivers that flow through the country. The first map was given to focus on detailed typography of rivers. With the labels turned on for the rivers shapefile I opened its properties, went to placement and position and selected river placement. This added an effect to the standard labels that made them appear that they were flowing with the rivers.
The second map is using the first map as a layout.
The second map here is a continuation of my first map of the Rivers in the Mexican boundary. For this map I added labels for States and Cities while keeping the labels for the rivers that were on the previous map. I changed the color of the states here to a light yellow that way it would be easier to see the text on the map. Instead of removing labels I tried to make the existing Cities,
States, and Rivers work together by balancing them with different size fonts,
styles, and effects. My rivers font ended up needing to go much smaller than my
existing deliverable. From a 12 down to an 8. I changed the color of the river
labels to blue to help match them up accordingly. I then took the states and
made them a grey color and decreased their font as well. I took the cities,
which was supposed to be most important. Cities had higher priority relative to
states. I used the weights tool in the label editor and increased the weight of
the city labels to encourage the city label to overcome any conflict with a
lesser weighted label. Then prioritizing the features I moved cities to the
top, States to the middle, and Rivers to the bottom. By doing these
modifications to the automatic labels, I was able to create a map that had all
of the data for the viewer to see. Though there is a decent amount of
information on the map, it is still legible to an extent. The labels could be
cleaned up more. I am trying to figure out a way to make them annotations or
graphics and move them around manually. Balancing numerous labels was a challenge, especially when
I wasn’t placing them all manually. Even though the automated form of labeling
saves a lot of time, I think the old fashioned way of inputting each label
manually allows more freedom for customization of labels as far as placement
and effect go.
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