Mod 3 - Typography

This week's lesson was on Typography.  The lesson was put to use by labeling various features on a map of Marathon, Fl using typographic principles.

I started out in ArcMap importing a map of Florida counties from last week's lesson and zooming in to focus on the Marathon portion of the Florida Keys.  Since Marathon stretches mostly east to west I changed my layout to landscape to zoom in as close as possible.   I added a second data frame to show all of the Keys and the southern portion of Florida so the location of Marathon could be put in perspective.  Other than that the only other thing I added in ArcMap was a scale bar.  I then exported my file to an Adobe Illustrator (AI) file.  I went to work in AI and did this:

Map of Marathon in the Florida Keys.                         

The map imported into AI was very sparse.  The first thing I did was sort out my layers and get them cleaned and straightened out. This was important because I had a scale bar in my drawing and needed to associate that with my landmass so they would stay in sync through zooming and re-sizing.  Once I did that, I changed my orientation from portrait to landscape to get the best view of my image.


The next thing I tried to do was add a background cover and that's when I figured out I had deleted my neatline again.  Fortunately I had just received my assessment for last week's assignment and the fix was mentioned in that so I was able to correct this error by inserting a rectangle.  With the rectangle in place I was able to add the background and also a decorative border.  The border provided my first customization feature.

After that I spent a bit of time figuring out the how I wanted to display my text.  I knew I needed different colors for the water and land and decided to go with a different style as well, though the water labels would also be italicized.  Then I needed to figure out the hierarchy for text size.  One of the complications here was the fact that Marathon actually spans several keys.  Going from largest to smallest it seemed the Keys should have had a larger text than a city, but the city encompasses several Keys.  It was proving to be a bit of a dilemma until I recalled the focus of the map was supposed to be Marathon and so its size combined with its importance settled the matter and I made Marathon's text the larger.

I had a couple false starts adding the text.  I thought once I selected a color from the color palette it would stay that color until I changed it.  There may be a way to cause it to do that, but if there is I haven't figured that out yet.  Every time I entered a new string of text I had to select the color again.  There are several different ways the colors come up and it seemed every time I tried to select the color it came up differently and I was having a hard time selecting the same color from among the various similar shades.  Eventually I realized since I had set my layers up so well I could just add the text in whatever color it came up then, when I was done, select them all by layer and change it all to the same color.  After I figured that out I also figure out how to save a color I had already used on a separate palette to be more easily selected when I wanted it.

I chose to use thematic symbols for my points of interest such as the state park because I like how they stand out in a sea of text and make obvious to the viewer what they represent with just a quick glance.  It wasn't until afterward that I realized I had my second customization feature.  I wasn't real happy with the symbol I selected for the country club.  I didn't think it stood out enough but I had made so much progress learning so many things in AI, I decided to wait until another time to figure out how to import an outside image.

For my third feature customization I had wanted to add halos to some of my text but I never could figure out how to do that.  I'm still not sure if that has to be done as the text is being added or if it's something that gets done to selected text.  While I was looking through the tool bars trying to figure that out I found the Drop Shadow feature under Effect>Stylize and decided to try that to see what it would do.  I selected my map title for this experiment an decided I liked it.

This week's assignment went much more smoothly for me.  I had a lot more time to explore AI and figure things out and that helped a lot.  There are still a lot of things that just don't make sense to me, but I'm learning.  I do find it to be much more cumbersome to use than Autocad or ArcMap, but I'm hoping once I'm more familiar with it things will start to make more sense.

GIS Cartography

This map is a representation of the population of Mexico by State.  It is color coded to show at a glance the difference in population from state to state. 

This week's assignment had us exploring, editing and managing the data with a multiple of tools, attributes, and layouts.  To achieve this we had to create three maps.  The first was of the Population of the States of Mexico.  This was the easiest one yet gave me the most trouble.  Somehow I got my neatline messed up and when I tried to print it the top and bottom of the border were cut off.  I spent a fair amount of time trying to understand what I did wrong and fix it, but finally got to the point where I realized it would be faster to just start again from scratch.  One thing this lesson taught me was to not only save early and save often, but to also check my print preview prior to saving. 

The second map was of Central Mexico and its urban areas, railroads, highways and rivers.  This map was fun.  It started out so busy and crowded it was overwhelming.  But little by little we started changing the symbology to cut down the clutter and make the map more readable.  Step by the step the map became more and more legible until finally, a quick glance and a peak at the legend told the whole story of what this map was about.

Last was a map of the typography of Mexico.  This map included a couple firsts.  In this map we used a raster image of Mexico and showed the elevation using a color ramp with stretched symbology.  This portion of the assignment came with fewer directions so we had to work a few more things out on our own.  This one was also a lot of fun.

Cartographic Skills - Module 2

Module 2 - Introduction to Graphic Design with Adobe Illustrator

This week's lesson was an introduction to Adobe Illustrator.  It was a very difficult assignment for me.  I started out in ArcGIS with a very basic map then added just a few elements before exporting it to an Adobe Illustrator (AI) file.  This is the map I imported into AI.

And everything went downhill from there.  AI was not at all intuitive for me.  I had a difficult time finding everything I was looking for, starting with the layer panel.  I kept bouncing back and forth between the lecture video and the assignment directions and missing things on both ends.  It took me a while to figure out how to separate out the different elements of the scale bar, north arrow and legend.  But even after finally getting that I never did make a good selection on the neatline.  I think there were two and I deleted both.  I tried a few times to replace it with a rectangular box, but never could get that to go in right.  This kept me from being able to change my background color.  I don't know if it would have helped if I knew what a neatline is, but I am now determine to figure that out.

Running the script was very simple, particularly since the problems had been raised on the discussion board and very clear explanations were given on how to proceed.  Once I had that done I easily found the three state symbols I wanted to use, but never did figure out how to import them.  The only way I could figure out how to save the image was to a jpeg file and it wouldn't let me import or clip and paste that.

Finally at this point I realized I was going to have to make a decision between turning my assignment in late and falling behind on my next assignment, or turning it in incomplete and keep scrambling to get ahead so I'm not working on future assignments on the last day.  Since my schedule isn't due to let up for another week I decided to take the hit on this assignment in the hopes of getting caught up before the next one is due.

So I zoomed out to take another look at the map before exporting it to a .jpg file and found another problem.

Somehow, during the course of my internal debate, Florida developed what appears to be a chain of islands off her eastern shore.  Apparently I managed to moved the water without moving the rest of the map with it.  I couldn't have done that if I had tried, so I don't know how I did it without even being aware of doing it.  But I'm looking forward to figuring it out once I have to time to go back and look at it. 

GIS4043 - Intro to GIS

Week 2 - Own Your Map

 

In Week 2 of GIS4043 - Own Your Map we determine what factors needed to be considered before designing a map layout.  Some of those things are:

• The purpose of the map
• The intended audience
• If the map will stand alone or be part of a series
• How many data frames will be required
• What size paper will the map be printed on
• Will it contain graphs or reports
• How will the page be oriented
• What elements will be displayed and how will they be organized. 

With these considerations in mind I created this map depicting the location of UWF's main campus in Escambia County, Fl.  An inset map of all the counties in Florida was added to give perspective on where in the state of Florida Escambia County is located.  The cities and town displayed were limited to just a couple in the general vicinity of the school.

In adding elements to the map, all essential elements as defined by UWF GIS Online were added.  These elements are:  Title, Scale, Legend, North Arrow, Border, Date, Data Source, Cartographer Name.

Cartographic Skills - Module 1

Module 1 Lab:  Map Critique

The purpose of this lab was to assist the student in finding or developing their cartographic aesthetic and developing their cartographic style using cartographic design principles.  This lab was to teach the student to:

• Understand common map design principles
• Identify examples of good and poor map design
• Conduct thorough map evaluations, providing an evaluation overview and constructive critique for each example

Example of a well designed map:

 Fern Hollow Trail Map

Cartographer : White Oak Lake State Park

I consider the Fern Hollow Trail Map a well-designed map because it gives me all the information I want at a quick glance without a lot of clutter to get in the way.  The background could have been made more appealing, but the simplistic design makes it easier for the hiker to verify information on the move.  I like the way line type was used to depict the difference in the length of the trails and that the legend only included the information pertinent to the hiker.  Any other information that might be of interest to the hiker, such as campsites or cutoffs to shorten the hike, was depicted directly on the map, but in a very limited way.   Overall I found the layout of the map to be very well balanced.

This map is a (1) well-designed presentation of interesting data (anything to do with hiking is interesting), (2) communicating complex ideas (how one trail compares to another in length) with clarity, precision and efficiency.  It allows the hiker (3) the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time (by seeing the different length hikes in a quick glance at the different line types).  This map, therefore, meets at least three of the Map Design Principles of a well designed map.


Example of a poorly designed map:

North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns 

Cartographer Unknown

This is a very poorly designed map.  The cartographer tried to provide too much information for too large an area.  With everything compressed so much to fit it all in, the text is too small to read and the map too cluttered to make sense of.

If all the information is required the map should be broken down into several regions and multiple maps made.  Only that information pertinent to that particular region should be displayed.  The data should be reviewed for its relevance and cut down if possible.  The title should be placed without any breaks in it and sized larger.  The cartographer’s name should be listed somewhere and a scale and date should be added.

This was really the first time I've ever looked at a map not of my design and considered what I did or did not like about it.  The Fern Hollow Trail Map was very easy to critique.  The things I like about it stood out immediately.  The North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patters, on the other hand, was so muddled it took me a while to sort through what, specifically, caused me to want to avoid even looking at it.  After examining this map so closely I think I will always be careful not to try to cram too much information into one little map.

GIS4043 - ArcGIS Overview

GIS4043 - ArcGIS Overview Lab Parts I & II

Process Summary:

ArcGIS Overview

PART I: ArcMap Overview

Part I of Week 1 ArcGIS Overview Lab covered basic ArcGIS Tools ad Views and adding data in ArcMap in order to learn how to:

• ·         Locate and Launch ArcGIS/ArcMap

• ·         Review the individual file components of a shapefile

• ·         Locate and use commonly used tools in ArcMap

• ·         Navigate ArcHelp (online version)

• ·         Construct a basic Map in ArcMap

• ·         Identify MXD map file and Export map images to JPG or PNG format

1.      The Part I lab prompted for an examination of the Metadata in ArcCatalog for the following files:This information was gathered from the metadata for each of the layers using methods provided in Part I lab.

      

Layer	Data Type	Publication Information: Who Created The Data?	Time Period Data Is Relevant	Spatial Horizontal Coordinate System	Data Summary / Description
Cities	Point	USGS	2008	GCS_WGS_1984	World Cities represents the locations of major cities of the world.
World_Countries	Polygon	USGS	2008	GCS_WGS_1984	World Countries (Generalized) represents generalized boundaries for the countries of the world as they existed in January 2008.

 

2.       The following file paths define the location of all files used or created by this project:

Working data folder filepath:

S:\My Documents\GIS4043\Week1Orientation\Data\OverviewArcGIS

Working MXD(s):

S:\My Documents\GIS4043\Week1Orientation\Document\mr_overview_map.mxd

Other Working Documents:

S:\My Documents\GIS4043\Week1Orientation\Document\mr_overview_map.jpg

S:\My Documents\GIS4043\Week1Orientation\Document\mr_overview_ps.doc

PART II: ArcGIS Overview

Part II of Week 1 ArcGIS Overview Lab covered using ArcGIS Help using:

• ·         ArcGIS Resource Center Site through the internet browser

• ·         ArcGIS Help within ArcMap

• ·         Search Tool within ArcMap

PART III: ArcGIS Overview Process Summary

Week 1 – ArcGIS Overview started with setting up folders in network drives to extract project files to and store files created during the lab.  I ran into my first problem here by not being sure what would be required and added more folders than necessary, creating a very long path.  By the time I realized my mistake I already had a path set within my map that required I maintain my current set up or restart the whole process to enter a new path.

In Step 1: Launch ArcMap and Prepare Data, when I checked the data files I had extracted to my S drive I realized I was missing my Cities.sbx file.  I viewed the source files on the R drive thinking somehow that one file had gotten dropped during the extract process but it wasn’t there either.  Since this file wasn’t one of the three files listed as mandatory I posted a query regarding the file on the Discussion Board and moved on with my lab.  The TA responded she checked my S drive and saw it there with the other files, but it’s still not visible to me.  I still don’t know why, but it didn’t seem to interfere with my lab at all.  Everything else in Step 1 went fine. 

Step 2: Explore ArcMap ad Add Data brought me my second challenge.  When I clicked on the Add Data button then Folder Connections from the dropdown menu nothing happened.  I tried exiting out of the program and reentering, clicking other options in the dropdown menu then going back to Folder Connections, but couldn’t get it to do anything.  I skimmed through the Discussion Board and luckily found a post by another student who had the same problem, but knew a work around and posted that.   I went back to my Add Data box and saw the little icon of a folder with a plus sign on it.  When I clicked that Connect to Folder icon it allowed me to navigate the drives and select the files I needed.

Everything else went fine until I got to #7 of Step 3: Explore the Data.  When I opened the Cities.xml file I couldn’t make much sense of it.  I was able to find the information required for this assignment, but that was only because I knew specifically what to look for.  I’m looking forward to learning about more metadata in the later labs so I can better understand what I was looking at.