Apply the five essentials of map design while creating a reference map of Africa
Methods:
I chose to build my own color scheme for this map by looking at maps I liked online and adjusting the colors in Adobe Illustrator.
Using other reference maps of Africa, I labeled the water bodies, deserts, mountains, and valleys as requested.
I learned how to type on an arc path in Adobe Illustrator to follow the contours of rivers.
Challenges:
With the many varied sizes of African countries, I had to choose four or five sizes to provide some consistency while still matching the size of country labels to their land areas. This also involved playing with the spacing between letters to expand width without adjusting height.
The Central Rift Valley was especially challenging. I had to pour over maps of the Central Rift Valley to get a good idea of where it was located. Then, using arc building tools and tweaking them incessantly, I was able to provide the general outline of this feature.
I did not like my optionf for showing deserts. I did not want my labels to exceed the boundaries of the features. My Nmib Desert label is tightly packed together for that reason. I also wanted to kep them distinct from counrty labels so I reduced the transparency. I thought it also gave it a "sandy desert" look. However, it took away from the clarity.
It was also recommended that I be more willing to arc the text of country labels. I was apprehensive about doing so for the sake of consistency, but i will consider it in future maps.
Due to my inexperience, I learned a great deal about keeping layers organized in Adobe Illustrator to avoid changing things accidentally. I will omit the mention of this detail in future posts to avoid redundancy. But it most certainly has been an on-going process.
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