1 - Visual Contrast
This element is fundamental for the basic look at a map. It is important to emphasize the meaningful parts of a map by giving those features a high contrast in comparison with less meaningful parts. Black and white is an obvious and clear contrast, though it's not the most natural way to present a map. Don't make the water and the land too close in color; let whichever one is more important stand out.
2 - Legibility
Like Visual Contrast, legibility is one of the basic things a viewer notices with a glance. Can they read the map? Symbols should be familiar and appropriate in size. Simple geometric symbols like a small circle representing a city are easy to see at smaller sizes, but more complex symbols like airplanes representing airports need to be larger to be legible.
3 - Figure-Ground Organization
"Figure" refers to what the map is trying to show; the "ground" is the reference background gor the information. Cartographers use this principle of design to emphasize specific features of a map, like a certain country or a mountain range. Whitewashing (D), drop shadowing (F), and feathering (E) as well as adding other details to the map (C) are methods of organizing the figure-ground relationship.
4 - Hierarchical Organization
Sometimes on a map there are different layers of important information: some features may be more important than others. More generally, on the page itself certain things like the map are more important than other elements like the title. Correctly organizing information by hierarchy helps viewers classify information and identify patterns. On a reference map (A and B), using text size to correspond to the size of a town or city would be an example. On a thematic map (C), the theme should be the highest level in the hierarchy.
5 - Balance
Two components of balance are visual weight and visual direction. Features on a map and on a page should be arranged so that the general composition is neither too heavy (dominated by a big shape) nor too light (no focus) and so that the viewer naturally knows where their gaze should fall to read the information. For example, placing the map slightly above the horizontal center gives it the most prominent position on the page; placing the title above the map ensures that it is read first and the viewer understands what the map is showing.
This is a useful article for our class, especially at this point in the semester. At the beginning of the semester, I definitely wasn't paying as close attention to how exactly I was representing my data, I was just trying to produce the map. However, now that we have all had more practice and are more comfortable with ArcGIS, I think we can pay closer attention to some of the smaller details and changes listed in this article.
ReplyDeleteRecently Slate.com did a news article about the "Greatest American Map" which one best map this year at the annual meeting of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/01/the_best_american_wall_map_david_imus_the_essential_geography_of_the_united_states_of_america_.html
The Cartographer, David Imus, worked 6000 hours over 2 years to make the map spending a lot of time on every detail. He did not use any GIS, and might even be against compter automation in map making.
I must agree with the first statement, this is great for the class. I wanted to read this article just to see some nicely made maps but the outlining of "do's and Do not's" has really helped me realize mistakes I have made and how to correct them. GIS is a great tool but I think you need a degree in design to go with it.
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