Module 3 - Cartographic Design - South Florida Hispanic Population

This week's lesson covered cartographic design.  We learned about how to arrange the map elements and the composition of the map in order to most effectively present the information to the map user.  We can achieve this through the use of cartographic design principles.  By recognizing the hierarchy, or order of importance, of elements that go on the map, you can emphasize or de-emphasize them, by the use of color schemes, element size and element position.  This map displaying South Florida's Hispanic population percentages by county uses a chloropleth scheme, in which the overall percentage for each county is shown by a class and color.  The color scheme used is a monochromatic gradational one, that suggests increasing density.

The main thematic symbol of the map is the purple South Florida counties map.  It is most important, so it stands out as a strong field against a more subdued ground, by being larger and more colorful.  The other elements become more and more subdued with lower position in the hierarchy.  For example, Title and Legend are secondary in importance, so they are also fairly bold, but not as bold as the main Field (South Florida Counties).  The inset maps (base information) are intermediate, and fairly subdued.    Scale, source data and authorship, and North Arrow are fairly inconspicous because they are the least critical supporting information.

This was a challenging lab because I am finding Adobe Illustrator to be subtle and tricky (compared to ArcMap). But, I gained a lot of practice in it with this lab, and feel more comfortable now.