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.