Gun Ownership and Gun Murders by State- exercise 8

dorndd_exercise8, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

This map also displays data that interests me.  In this map I am comparing gun ownership in a state, to gun murders in that same state.  To do this I first made a choropleth map of the gun murders (per 100,000 people), the darker the red the more murders.  Then I made a graduated circle map of gun ownership, where the bigger the circle the more gun ownership in that state (per 100,000 people).  The message I was trying to get across with this multivariate map is that the states that own more guns committ less gun murders.  I find there is a positive coorelation between the two.  The biggest difficulty I had with this map and something I would change if I could go back, is the size of the biggest circle.  I wish the map would show a little more variance in circle sizes, but I feel it still gets my message across. 

Number of State Parks by State- exercise 7

dorndd_exercise7, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

I recently got into camping and backpacking and because of that I scour the internet looking for good places to go.  This assignment gave us the freedom to choose our own map data.  Most of the places I have been looking to travel to have been state parks, so it only made sense that I map them!  I found data of state park numbers per state online and went to work.  The process of making a graduated symbol map is relatively easy and this type of map shows the data well I think.  The biggest issue I ran into while making this map is deciding how big I wanted my biggest circle to be.  After many attempts I managed to find a size that allowed my smallest circle to still be visible.  displaying the data in the legend was also easy as all I did was take circles off the map and put them in the legend.  I think the reason I really enjoyed making this map is because I mapped something that interests me.

North Carolina Residents Claiming American Ancestry by County- exercise 6

dorndd_exercise6, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

My first Choropleth map! To make this map we used Excel to calculate class breaks for our data.  Each way of calculating class breaks resulted in a different map.  Two of the maps represent the data in percentage and two of the maps have absolute data.  As you can see all four are different because of the different methods.  The hardest part of this assignment was figuring out which county was which.  by pulling up a map of North Carolina counties on the internet and comparing it to this one in Illustrator, I was able to find where each county was located.  Color choice was easy because I used Cynthia Brewer's "colorbrewer" website for selections.  I find Choropleth maps to be very effective in displaying data, and it makes it easy to see the results.  

Lanesboro, Minnesota Map- exercise 5

dorndd_exercise5, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

This was probably my favorite assignment that we did this semester.  To make this map of my hometown I first used ArcGis to make a basemap, which I then dropped into Adobe Illustrator.  Once I had the base map in Illustrator I then used the pen tool to trace the roads, rivers, parks, exedra throughout Lanesboro.  One neat tool that I discovered was the smoother tool, which allowed me to make my roads not as blocky and more flowing.  After finishing all of the features I then made a green rectangle that covered the entire document and deleted the base map.  This was the first project where we were in charge of making the map basically from scratch.  It was challenging but I found it very fun to be able to create something like this.  This exercise also greatly expanded my Adobe Illustrator knowledge and allowed me more artistic freedom for my map.

Eau Claire Bike Route- exercise 4

dorndd_exercise4, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

For this assignment I had the opportunity to use a GPS device to either "track" or "point" data on a base map of my choice.  I decided to take my GPS on a bike ride through Eau Claire and have it track my movement.  After gathering the data I then uploaded it to a data software, and from there into ArcGis.  I then dropped in a base map, and there you have it a map of my route!  I was very surprised how well the device was able to track me on my bike, even though portions of the trip were through dense tree cover.  Even in these times the information was still delivered, and my location tracked.  The ease of use for the GPS, along with the results you can achieve are reasons I wish to do more with this technology in the near future, like bring a GPS with me on a hiking trip. 

Projections of South America- exercise 3

dorndd_exercise3, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

To complete this assignment I was to overlay ten different projections of South America on top of each other.  By doing this one would be able to see the different type of distortion each projection shows.  All projections had to be positioned so that 60° W was there central meridian.  Using ArcGis to make the projection and then cutting away the other locations on the globe I was able to then paste the outline of South America into an Adobe Illustrator document.  After repeating this process for each projection and changing the colors of each outline I got the above image.  This project was tough in some ways while I was completing it.  The first is that it is crucial that when changing the meridians you followed the directions exactly.  Another difficulty with this project was finding ten colors that allowed you to see all of the projections.  I had a lot of fun with this assignment and it was a good intro into ArcGis.

Africa Political Map- exercise 2

dorndd_exercise2, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

For this exercise I was tasked on creating a political map of Africa that included all country labels, as well as labels for main terrain features.  Some examples of those features are rivers, lakes, mountains, and gulfs. With that we also had to use the five fundamentals of map design to make an ascetically pleasing map.  Finding colors that went well together for both the countries and for the figure-ground presented a challenge.  Also, some of the labels were especially tricky to place and required a significant amount of thought and trial and error.