Typography

This week, we learn all about typography and completed a lab focused on labeling your map. The instructions included several ways to get the labels on the map and then left us with instructions to make a map with specific things labeled.

I used ArcGIS Pro to create the map below using data provided by my professor. To add the labels for the city names, I simply toggled them on and then used the preset label settings for "Populated Place" to begin with. For the Swamps, I used the SQL tool in the label tab to select the items I wanted labeled and the column to draw the labels from. For the Rivers, I turned on the labels, adjusted the settings, and then converted the labels to annotations so I could edit the labels more granularly using the move and edit vertices tool. I'm not great at editing the vertices, but did the best I could to position the labels along the rivers! I think I need to spend a lot more time working with that tool before I master it.

I customized a few things on the map, largely playing with the colors and fonts. I changed the coloring of the counties and Lakes and Swamps. I choose Grey 20% for the counties as they represent background information that is good to have but not the focal point of the map. I choose Sodalite Blue for the rivers as well as the lakes and swamps so all waterways would be represented with the same color that popped on the grey background. 

I changed the fonts for the title, legend, scale bar, and credits to Bookman Old Style, with the credits set as italic. I liked the look of the font and thought a serif was best used in this space. For the map labels, I choose a sans serif font for the labels as the plainer font seemed easier to read. For the cities, I left them Grey 70% with a white halo. For the waterways, I changed the color to Cherry Cola. 

I used circle 1 as my base for the symbols for each city, but adjusted the size down to 8pt and changed the color to Gray 80%. The colors fit with the rest of the scheme I’ve picked out and the smaller point size seemed a little less intense. 

I look forward to continue playing with all the advanced label settings as I continue on my map-making journey.

Becoming a Map Critic

This week in Cartography, we had to pick two maps and offer critics - one poorly designed and one well designed. I jumped online and starting searching the depths of the internet to find some bad maps. I found the two maps below. I had a template of questions to answer about each. I had some immediate thoughts about each, but found that working through the questions gave me even more to say. 

This map was made by one of my favorite web comic authors, Drew, and while silly, is a great satire for beautifully designed visualizations that ultimate say not a lot.

At first, I wanted to use the Ohio map for my poorly designed map. But the more I criticked and studied it, the more I felt that, while silly, it was actually a pretty good map! This map, though heavily satirical, is actually very well-designed. Its objective is to satirize well-designed visualizations that actually provide no substantial information, and this comes across as very effective to me. Even if you don’t get this part of the joke, the map still provides some silly data that is well presented. The information displayed illustrates how far a state is from Ohio. While the legend gives this distance in silly slang, the meaning of the slang does resonant with the viewer as a way to think about distances. The simple visual design is not cluttered and provides just the right amount of information for the viewer, minimizing the “map crap” and only including what is necessary to understand the map. It does simplicity well. The map does not have any place labels but ultimately, doesn’t really need them. The main point is to show the distance from Ohio, which is clearly labeled in the legend. The author assumes the reader is familiar enough with the US to figure out which state is which. I really like the color choices. The color ramp illustrates the main point of the data (distance) in an intuitive manner (bright color = closer). The individual colors are different enough so it’s easy to tell the difference between them. The white outlines for the states work well with most colors, but they hard to see in the against the yellow. A different shade of yellow may have helped. The overall layout is nice, with the noncontiguous states filling in the page under the slant of the Southwest and the legend in the other corner. My biggest criticism has to do with how he’s coded some of the states. I would have placed Colorado and New Mexico into the “A ways” category based on the distance show and mapping patterns show on the map.

Symbol overload! The author definitely didn't follow the less is more philosophy, and is ultimately not able to convey much on this map.

After using the first map for my well-designed map, I knew this was meant for my poorly designed map critic. This map is trying to make a joke about alcohol consumption in the UK. However, it looks bad and ultimately contains a lot of misleading data. The overall style aesthetic is what I’d call “Basic Google Maps” and it’s not good. The author didn’t really make choices about the style as much as left the settings on default in Google. There isn’t an actual title and no other map elements were included. The author has taken minimizing the “map crap” a few steps too far. The layout has also cut off part of the data on the map. I would argue the map is basically telling lies, as it’s not really giving you true information about pubs in the UK. A better visualization choice would have been to create a heat map showing where pubs were most numerous. Knowing this would inevitably be around population centers, the best way to portray the information may be to calculate pubs per population. The map should include a legend to describe what is being visualized, as well as a title and appropriate labels to help focus the map.

Introducing...Me!

Hello!

My name is Emily Jane Murray and I'm an archaeologist from St. Augustine. I work for the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN). A lot of my work focuses on heritage at risk, 3D digital documentation, and community-based archaeology. I joined the UWF GIS certificate program to learn how to use GIS as so much of what I do requires it. Archaeology is a very place-based discipline, after all! I work with a wonderful GIS specialist but would like to be able to analyze spatial data, georeference historic maps, and complete other tasks like this on my own. Cartography will be my second GIS class. I've already put some of my skills from the Intro class to use creating maps to document archaeological sites and features, including using GPR data to identify the locations of subterranean features including burials and privies. I'm excited to learn more about map making as creating a product that anyone can view, enjoy, and learn from is the most important part of my job! 

I made a very nerdy StoryMap showing off some of the 3D projects I've worked on at FPAN: https://arcg.is/19TC4G0

When I'm not working (or doing GIS homework!), I enjoy reading fantasy and historical fiction novels, hanging with my cat and 4 chickens, and doing a variety of fiber arts including knitting, visible mending, sewing, quilting, and natural dyeing.

UPDATE:

Since I first posted this for the Cartography class, I've been able to put a lot of the skills I've learned to use in creating maps for publications and presentations, working with spatial data for site documentation, and even georeferencing GPR slices to tell exactly where the anomalies are in the field when we revisit sites. I'm excited to learn more tools and methods to keep growing my skills!
Links to an external site.When I'm not working (or doing GIS homework!), I enjoy reading fantasy and historical fiction novels, hanging with my cat and 4 chickens, and doing a variety of fiber arts including knitting, visible mending, sewing, quilting, and natural dyeing.


When I'm not working (or doing GIS homework!), I enjoy reading fantasy and historical fiction novels, hanging with my cat and 4 chickens, and doing a variety of fiber arts including knitting, visible mending, sewing, quilting, and natural dyeing