Cartographic Design

The third module had me creating a choropleth map of south Florida’s Hispanic population. This map was created in Adobe Illustrator. All of the essential map elements had to be manipulated within Adobe. This required moving and resizing of all the elements so that they would work comfortably within the map. The final step was to add some background color so that the map would look finished.

GIS Cartography Module 3

“GIS is not just about making maps”

This lab focused on the cartographic output of GIS. GIS analyst needs to be able to create maps that convey information in a clear and concise manner. If the analyst is not able to do this through cartographic output their customer will not understand the research that they have conducted.

The first map for this lab involved more than one layer and how to manipulate and organize the layers in an intuitive manner. I downloaded an Adobe swatch exchange file from colorbrewer to have sequential colors that ramp upward in intensity to show increasing population in each state. 

In the second map I added road, rivers, and urban areas over 1 million. I then excluded smaller roads and rivers since the map was overly cluttered. Finally I added a inset map and labeled the large urban areas.

The finally map for this week was a elevation map. This map shows an increasing intensity of colors for the higher elevations.

Introduction to Adobe Illustrator Module 2

Here is a basic map I created with ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator. This was my first experience with Illustrator. I quickly found that this program is very powerful and will take some time to learn. I would say master, but by the time that happens they will have moved to the next version. The user interface is simple to pickup as it is organized much like Arc from the brief exposure to it. This map was created from a map that was already created within Arc minus the labeling. I exported this map from Arc as a .ai and imported that file in Illustrator. Once in Illustrator I organized the different layers and groups so that the data in the file could easily be manipulated. It was important that the scale bar and the county groups were within the same layer; If they were not in the same layer the scale bar would not be adjusted to the counties when the map is resized. The final step was to add text to the map. I added the title, name, date, and data source via the text tool. Once I was happy with the map I exported it as a jpeg to be shared.

Own Your Map! Module 2

In this weeks lab I worked on further manipulating the map within ArcGIS. I added two data frames which allowed a inset to be displayed on the map to give a overview of the area. I also added a interstate, river, and UWF Escambia county location shape-file. The interstate and river files were trimmed to the boundaries of Escambia county to keep the map clean. The star is the Escambia county campus for UWF.

Map Critique Module 1

Bad Map Design

This is a bad map for many reasons.  The main problem is there is entirely too much information. What is being displayed here could easily be broken up into several maps. The author of this map may have interesting and good data but one cannot understand what is being portrayed without spending a good a lot of time reading each legend at carefully studying the map. The author put in the time to gather data and make the map, but what you take out is confusion of over lapping data on a very large scale.

Good Map Design

This is an example of a good map. This map shows clear and detailed ancestry information through simple colors, which are pleasing to the eye. It uses simple, neutral colors, which work well with this type of data. The contrasts of neighboring colors make smaller details stand out. The labels used are simple and clear information. This map follows all of Tufteisms from The visual Display of Quantitative information. Although this map does not have a North arrow it is assumed that North is up as the target audience will be some one from the United States. Also the map would not be used for navigation purposes, as it does not have navigable features.

ArcGIS Overview Module 1

Here is the first map that I have created for GIS4043. The process that the class uses is different that what I used though work. The layout view is hard to work with until you have experience with it, once you know how it works it becomes easier. I started by adding the country and city data to this map. After that I manipulated the data to break the counties up by their populations. I then added the legend, scale, North arrow, and title.

Introduction

Hello, I started out in the military working as an Imagery Analyst where I was stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha NE. I completed my enlistment there and moved to Huntsville Al. While in Alabama I worked for Intergraph creating 3D shape files using their software, which they said was number two on the market to ARC. No one that I have talked to has ever heard of it either. After two years in Huntsville I moved to Gulf Breeze Fl where I have worked at Hurlburt Field for the last 7 years as an Imagery Analyst. I have done some GIS work while in Florida but not as much as Alabama. I have just completed by BAS in Technology and Resource Management. I hope the GIS track is more enjoyable than getting a degree so that I could check a box off on applications.