GIS 6005 Module 1

This is the first blog for GIS 6005 Communicating GIS. For this week's module we learned about and practiced employing the five primary design principles. The fiver primary design principles for maps as stated by Aileen Buckley (2012) are legibility, visual contrast, figure ground organization, hierarchical organization and balance. In the lab portion of this module we were provided with some basic maps and some maps that really lacked elements associated with primary design principles. Our job was to use the limited data that was provided and attempt to improve on various aspects of the map to help achieve some of the basic design principles. 

Our first task was to improve upon a map that was very poorly designed in order to create some balance, visual contrast and legibility. The data we had to work with was very limited. I changed colors, symbols and other essential map elements to make a map that was more subtle while still conveying some form of organization and balance. 

For our second exercise we had to change the map in order to cater to new audience. We had to to use the same data but change the theme of the map entirely. Previously the map was meant to demonstrate areas where logging was restricted, so non-harvestable areas were overwhelming. Our goal was to show areas that were harvestable and to make the map more appealing to a potential organization looking to potentially acquire the lease. I lowered the emphasis on restricted areas and tried to pick colors that would clearly show harvestable areas while adding some elements to make the map more appealing to a potential lessor. 

Our third challenge this week was to modify a layout containing the San Francisco Bay area. The main objective was to alter and experiment with typography to make a legible balanced map. We were given a list of landmarks and areas to label and had to find colors, fonts, styles and placements that would work to make a legible and usable map. 

For the map of Mexico above we were asked to experiment with dynamic labeling and try to come up with the most legible and conflict free labels that we could without manually placing any labels. Chaing the sizes, font style, letter spacing and features symbol all impacted how the dynamic labels rendered. 

Our final map was a variation of the previous map that depicts rivers in Mexico. For this map we had to symbolize Mexican states major cities, the capital of Mexico and the rivers. It took a good amount of effort to make a map with all the required information that is still legible. In this case I had to make labels into annotations and do a good amount placing manually. Hierarchical organization and legibility were definitely challenges on this map.