MAP CRITIQUE #5

 

                                                                http://www.urban.org/

 

This is a map from the website Urban.org in need of a lot of help.

 

 

Figure Ground: There is little figure ground here to speak of, so it is hard to critique this map on this point. However, choosing the cream color for the blank area in the top right draws attention. I believe the map maker was intending to do the opposite.

 

 

Legibility: This map is almost completely illegible. There are no words or figures to help you understans what any symbols mean.

 

 

Clarity: Coinciding with legibility in this case, the map symbols other than the hospital symbol mean nothing to me. All of the brown symbols in the middle of the map are completely foreign as well. Their is no legend, no title, no north arrow, and no scale. Completely unclear to say the least.

 

 

Balance: The map would probably be in an appropriate place if some of the unimportant residual area had been filled with a legend and clarifying information. Without it, the map is relatively unbalanced.

 

 

Visual Hierarchy: The brown symbols. the blue water area, the empty tan area, and the pink area are what draw your attention. Two of these four or probably the least important elements of the map. The others maybe important, but I have no idea what they are.



MAP CRITIQUE #4

 

http://www.stratasan.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/BadSodaMap.png

 

This is an excellent map of terms for soft drink predominantly used in U.S. counties.

 

 

Figure Ground: As a personal preference, I may have chosen a lighter background color, but the color chosen is distinctively different from every color used on the continent.

Legibility: This is not an overly wordy map, but the words and figures used are very easy to read.

Clarity: Though this map has more classifications than is usually acceptable. It is still completely clear what each color represents and they are distinctively separate from the colors. Thus, they are easy to pick out. I may have chosen to separate Hawaii and Alaska with some separating lines.

Balance: This map fills up the area nicely. Again, I am a little thrown by Alaska and Hawaii. It may have been better to rotate the images as well.

Visual Hierarchy: Color hierarchy movies, interestingly, from lighter to vibrant to dark colors. It may have been better to choose an intermediary color between light and vibrant. The tendency is to think virant colors indicate the highest concentration especially with red, yellow, and green. However, the colors may have been less distinctive for clarity.

 





MAP CRITIQUE #3

 

  

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/23/nyregion/20110123-nyc-ethnic-neighborhoods-map.html?_r=0

 

 

This is a great map from the NY Times portraying ethnic neighborhoods in New York City.

 

 

Figure Ground: While I think the map may have been helped by a very light background color. The figure ground is still very clear and helpful for the map.

 

Legibility: Font choices make this map very readable. Capitalization for the five boroughs help identify them from the more focused neighborhood divisions.

 

Clarity: I think clarifying material attached to this map is very helpful. The lack of a title detracts from the clarity. However, as this was probably part of an article, it was most likely clear from the rest of the article.What the different colors represent is also very clear. Also, smaller populations have. There is no north arrow as well. Scale is also missing.

 

Balance: This map is centered perfectly. Staten Island seems a little detatched but the strength of activity in the main portion of New York justifies it.

 

Visual Hierarchy: By using a lighter color for the often predominant white population, it draw attention to the other ethnic populations probably of more interest. Also, the use of stronger colors for smaller populations make sure they are not lost in the larger hispanic, black, and white populations.





MAP CRITIQUE # 2

 

 

http://www.secretservice.gov/press/Inaug_Pedestrian_2013.pdf

 

Here is a map of pedestrian walking routes in Washington D.C. produced by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. This map is simple, effective and clear with some details that do not contribute to the map.

 

 

Figure Ground: This map has very little figure ground to speak of. However, I do not feel that it detreacts from the map in any way.

 

Legibility: This map is very easy to read. A sans serif font is used and all labels are very clear. All text patterns are consistent (South to North and East to West).

 

 

Clarity: The major points of emphasis, the walking routes, are very clear. However, the yellow and grey colors in the background seem aribitrary. If they are not, no explanation is given about the meaning of these colors. Some clearer indication of what "RFK" is, for those who may not know, could be in order.

 

 

Balance: It seems like this map could very easily have been centered. It is top-left heavy as is. The large gaps in the bottom-left and right corners could have been eliminated by better centering the map.

 

 

Visual Hierarchy: The pedestrian walking routes are clearly the points of emphasis based on the visual presentation of the map. Further attention is drawn to the parade route which is probably the focus of the pedestrians.

MAP CRITIQUE #1

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/dialect-map-of-the-us-region-aschmann_n_3245496.html

 

 

Here is a VERY detailed map of North American English Dialects by Pronunciation Patterns.

 

Figure Ground: The figure ground for this map is generally good. Perhaps with such a busy map a lighter color should have been used for the water. Some of the lighter colors on the continent get lost as a result of being lighter than the striking blue surrounding it.

 

Legibility: Unfortunately, this map is not very legible at all. There is simply too much text with too small of fonts to really allow the reader to make out the words.

 

Clarity: This map is also not very clear (mostly because of the intense detail). With so many different patterns and symbols, and so much text, the average reader will not be able to make much sense of it. Also, some colors on the map have meaning while others do not. I found myself trying to determine why a region was shaded a certain color and was not able to ascertain a reason. This map may be ideal as an index specifically for academic purposes, but for communicating to most people, it fails.

 

Balance: There tends to be a little bit of a pull down and to the right on this map. However, becuase of the area being detailed I do not see that it could be avoided.There does appear to be good balance here.

 

Visual Hierarchy: Relating to the figure ground, the intense blue of the oceans detracts attention from some of the lighter colors on the continent. Also, relating to the clarity, some of the intense colors like the green in the North Central region draw your eye but do not communicate any meaning about the map.

PROPORTIONAL SYMBOL MAPPING IN GIS

  

 

 

Instructions:

Build a proportional symbol map (using a given base layer) in ArcGIS.

Methods:
The base map we were given contained information from the 2000 U.S. census. By opening the properties within the 'states' layer in the table of contents, I was able to open symbology at the top of the screen. From there I could choose any value from a dropdown menu to map. I also had to select proportional symbols under the quantities heading in accordance with the instructions.

I chose to make most of the map in ArcGIS. I was able to add my legend, title, and explanatory material directly from ArcGIS using the Insert dropdown menu. In order to make this map well,
I had to locate more type options similar to what you have in Word and Adobe Illustrator. By choosing customize at the top of the screen I was able to locate the draw toolbar. This gave me more aesthetic options to choose from.

Challenges:

Once I had selected proportional symbols and chosen to map the total Asian population in the 48 contiguous states, I had to choose the appropriate number of symbols to display in my legend and the min and max values for the correlating symbols. This required me to look at the values of each state and find the most meaningful number of classes. I then had to look at the symbol sizes in order to fit them appropriately to the size of my map.

When I built my legend, there were unhelpful headings included. I had to cover them with something. By selecting the box symbol in the draw toolbar I had pulled down, I was able to hide the material. I then drew my own Legend Headings over the top of my box.

After choosing my symbol sizes I noticed that symbols in Florida, Michigan, California, Idaho, Louisiana and New York were not visually centered to the eye. I did not see a way to move them in ArcGIS, so I exported the map as an Ai file to Adobe Illustrator. From there I was able to alter the location of my symbols.

However, this introduced a new problem. The Ai file did not transfer any of the typed material from ArcGIS. As a result, I tried exporting the file again as a PDF. After doing so the typed material was visible.

The last challenge had to do with the "Asian" classification used in the U.S. census. I felt a little uncomfortable with this terminology and did not want my map to leave a false reflection of myself as insensitive. I chose to include the formal definition the U.S. census provides for their terminology in order to explain why I used the term.

As I noticed in my previous chloropleth map, I needed to put in a light backdrop color in Adobe Illustrator rather than ArcGIS to keep that color from showing through the scale bar I had chosen to use.

CHLOROPLETH MAPPING IN GIS

 

 

Instructions:

Build a chloropleth map (using a given base layer) in ARC GIS for the lower 48 states only.  Using the data field and classification method of your choice, organize your data set into 5 classifications. Be sure the numbers in your legend make sense to readers.

 

Methods:

The base map we were given contained information from the 2000 U.S. census. By opening the properties within the 'counties' layer in the table of contents, I was able to open symbology at the top of the screen. From there I could choose any value from a dropdown menu to map. Also, under the quantities heading in the layers bar, I selected graduated colors (in accordance with the instructions)and then chose my color ramp on the main layer properties screen.

I chose to make most of the map in ArcGIS. I was able to add my legend, title, and explanatory material directly from ArcGIS using the Insert dropdown menu. In order to make this map well,
I had to locate more type options similar to what you have in Word and Adobe Illustrator. By choosing customize at the top of the screen I was able to locate the draw toolbar. This gave me more aesthetic options to choose from.

Challenges:
In order to normalize the data for readers of this map I had to manually change the range and the label for my 5 classifications on the main layer properties screen.

When I built my legend, there were unhelpful headings included. I had to cover them with something. By selecting the box symbol in the draw toolbar I had pulled down, I was able to hide the material. I then drew my own Legend Headings over the top of my box.

I tried inserting a light backdrop within ArcGIS. Unfortunately the color showed through the lighter colors on my chloropleth map. In order to resolve this, I exported my map as an Ai file and opened it in Adobe Illustrator. I placed a backdrop on my map in Illustrator only to notice the typed material from ArcGIS was missing. I had to go back to ArcGIS and export the file as a PDF in order for the typed material to be visible.

I chose not to include any explanatory material as this was not a subject I felt qualified to explain. Clearly I saw a pattern of older median ages in the midwest, and in retirement hotspots like Florida, parts of Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. I felt it better suited the map to allow readers to draw their own conclusions.