Module 3: Cartographic Design

 This week we learned about the essential elements of cartographic design based on Gestalt Principles of perceptual organization. These principles include topics such as visual hierarchy, contrast, figure-ground, and balance are the foundations to creating an optimal map and pleasant map reader experience. Below is a map I created of public schools located in Ward 7 of Washington, D.C., I made the map below with the Gestalt Principles in mind.

    This map was created in ArcGIS. To touch on my though process, I prioritized the symbols that were the purpose of the map. In this case it was the schools. I listed them by elementary, middle and high school applying both a color and size scale to note the differences between the features. Next priority after the map was cleaned up from the raw data was to apply a title and legend of appropriate proportions. As this tells the reader the purpose for the map and gives information on how to interpret the data. The next items were to input the neighborhood names as well as other defining areas (states, regions) for the base and secondary map. You’ll notice both my inset map title and subtitle are around the same size because I felt they were relevant toward each other and should have the same emphasis. Secondary to the legend was the list of schools which was also just as relevant as the legend thus sharing the same visual reference. Next on the size scale were any roads, boundaries, etc that provided relevant data as well as the scale bar and north arrow to provide context to the map. Finally the last to be considered were the data source, credits, as well as the frame lines. The credits were set to 6pt Arial font as they should be the very last thing the reader should be looking for or would want to notice.

I will note the most troubling thing about this design was adding the vignette shadow behind the map, I added this because the district was essentially "cut out" of it's surroundings and in order to have the map oriented north the district is no able to take up the whole map space. Thus I wanted to add a shadow for effect. But unfortunately this isn't as easy in ArcGIS as it is in other programs. Finally I decided the best way was to created a duplicate layer of the bottom polygon for the district and apply a gradient fill. The result is what you see below.