Archive for category Best Practices
Map Tips: From Extents to Restrooms to Blue-on-Blue
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on November 12, 2012
The following is a list of cartography quick-tips: random but good.
- The map extent for a printed map should either be recognizable (i.e., Colorado, Western Europe, Central America), well labeled (i.e., the Western U.S. with all states clearly labeled), or include an overview map. Exception: maps for researchers who are already quite familiar with the location.
- Point feature icons for restrooms, trail heads, hospitals, and the like need to be large enough to make an impact on the map. Don’t try to make them as small as possible. These icons make an impact when proportionally quite large on webmaps.
- Try to stick with no more than two typefaces per map: one sans and one serif. Make sure the sans and the serif complement one another. Complements don’t have to be similar, they just need to look good together. Indeed, typefaces that contrast quite a bit in height, width, or style can make good complements.
- When designing thematic maps, know your data. This means exploring the data in many different ways: histograms, other charts, scrolling through in spreadsheet form, querying, modeling, and other statistics. The best knowledge-transfer comes from a map maker who truly understands the data and can make appropriate inferences or correlations.
- Consider publishing the map with the data. Especially if you’ve made the data into a more usable format.
- Inverted color schemes are the new “classy”. Hint: if you want to win a map contest, use an inverted color scheme. When will this trend be worn-out?
- A dot density map can benefit from a legend explaining how the density of dots within the map units relates to real numbers and/or close-ups of single map units. Making these legends is as simple as taking a screenshot of that portion of the map and importing it as a graphic in the legend.
- Experiment with color oddities. While color conventions tell us that water is blue and land is tan or green, we’re not against seeing a refreshing new take on things like this blue on blue scheme.
- Always remember: it’s about the audience’s wants and needs, not about you. Get off your rear end and ask them what they want.
A Little Rule About Icons on Maps
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on October 3, 2012
Considering using icons on a map? Think about this first. How many icons of a single type will be on the map? Three or more? Great. One or two? Not so great. If there are only one or two locations where than icon will be used, there’s a good chance that you should use a label for it instead of an icon.
Icons add an additional step for the map reader in that they require the eye to move from the icon to the legend to determine what it means. If you can eliminate this additional step as much as possible, through the use of direct labeling, then you should.
If the icon is a simple and easily understood one–for example:
or
then it may be an exception to this rule, since the map reader would not necessarily need a key to decipher it. Icons that need deciphering, then, should be kept to a minimum where possible.
Handing Over a Map: Be Proactive
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on August 15, 2012
Whenever you present a product to your client–whether it’s a series of mock-ups, an intermediate-stage product, or a finished map–be proactive by letting the client know what decisions were made and why those decisions were made with reference to the design. You want to essentially “announce” what you’ve done. There are two reasons for this:
(1) To thwart questions and negative comments. When the client understands upfront the rational basis for color choices, font choices, and overall design choices, they are more likely to agree with what you’ve done.
(2) Really good design is easy to ignore. People do like to say that no feedback is good feedback, but you want to get credit for those good decisions. Go ahead and explain how the map was made and your client will have a whole new understanding of your capabilities.
Remember, a great map (or any project for that matter) will come from one of three situations: a receptive client, a noble cause, or great subject matter. Seek these.
Masking Text in ArcGIS
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on August 11, 2012
When certain features interfere with your labels like in this example, where the graticule line goes through the map title, the map appears unpolished:
If you are using ArcGIS to make the map, you can fix this by masking the text. Use the exact same background color that is underneath whatever feature you are “interrupting” and it’ll look like you purposely started and stopped the feature–in this example, the graticule line–before and after the text.
To do this: double-click the text feature, edit symbol, mask, halo, symbol, change color to the map’s background color, then click OK about five times. You can play around with the mask width to get just the right amount of spacing between the text and the surrounding feature(s).
The polished end-product:
How to Design a Winning Map Poster
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on July 25, 2012
I’m not at the Esri User Conference this year, but from some of the pictures that were tweeted at the map gallery last night, there came a need to write a post. Here’s what you’ve got to do if you want to make an award winning poster:
#1 Have ONE single message that you are trying to get across
#2 DO NOT cram every nuance of your research from the past 4 years onto that 60 x 40!
#3 The point of the poster is to teach someone ONE thing, not show off how much you know
#4 Make a dramatic graphic statement that looks different from the maps around you. This is a sure-fire way to get your map noticed.
#5 That drama needs to highlight your SINGLE teaching point
#6 You can have some extra details but they need to recede into the background and not compete with the SINGLE teaching point
Rectangular In-line Maps
Posted by Gretchen in Best Practices on June 22, 2012
If you do a lot of analysis and subsequent reporting, like I do, you’ll understand how awkward a report looks with maps sprinkled throughout it. It’s best to keep the report maps no bigger than 1/3 of the page for visual balance, as I’ve stated before. But here’s a new recommendation: make the maps rectangular, rather than square. This keeps the look and feel of the report consistent, since the text also runs in a rectangular fashion.
Here’s a report page with square-shaped map examples:
And here’s a report page with rectangular-shaped map examples:
I could have even made those rectangular maps the exact width of the text for bonus points.
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