Middle Earth Map - Critique 4

Next time you venture into Middle Earth you may want to bring this map! Well... maybe you won't be going there anytime soon.  This map of Middle Earth doesn't really have much as far as figure-ground goes, but I still feel like it manages to look ok.  The legibility of the map is good, the larger the area is the larger the label is (even if you can't pronounce it).  The clarity of the map is good and there is no overlapping on labels. The balance of the map is a little off as most of the mapped area is on the right. Having the title in the bottom left helps balance it out, but is in a bit of an awkward place. The map was well thought out though and looks very nice. The color of the maps may seem a little dull but I think that's because they are going for the look of an old map or page of a book. 

Carson Park Map - Critique 3

This map of carson park was made by the Chippewa Valley Museum.  I really like this map because it is pretty detailed and this is a place I really like to visit (two blocks from my house).  The figure-ground in this map is very good.  It has a nice contrast from the blue water to the green land.  The Legibility of the map is ok, I would probably change the color of the numbered circles so that they don't blend in to the dark colored trees as much.  The clarity of the map is really good.  One spot it could be better is on the road that cross from Lake Street into Carson Park.  If it was a little wider using displacement I think it would look better.  The balance of the map is good, there isn't an uneven placement of things.  Lastly the Visual Hierarchy of the map.  The map maker should have included a scale.  I also really like how trees were included in the map.  This gives it a more realistic look and helps take up more space.

Racial Populations in Denver, Colorado

Racial Populations in Denver, Colorado, a photo by DakotaDorn on Flickr.

Denver, Colorado is the sight of my newest map.  In this assignment I was to make four identical maps of downtown Denver and keep them at the same scale.  I then added data of different racial populations to each map.  Each map had to have a different color pattern, and the class breaks had to be the same for all of the maps.  This is the part that proved tough while working on this.  The reason is that Asian populations in Denver are very small so finding a class break that worked for all races was tough.  In the end I picked one that showed the other three well, and doesn't show much from the Asian population.  By not showing much though I am saying that there are not many that live there, so the data is still getting shown.  Another area of this map that was challenging was fitting all four maps and there legends in the document.  After changing fonts, adjusting font sizes, and scaling down the sizes of my maps I was able to make it work.