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.

U.S. Lynchings 1882-1968- Critique 2

I want to start off by saying this is a pretty poor excuse for a map.  The figure-ground is ok, but that is about all for this map.  Legibility is pretty poor and the way she spaced her name and her sources is pretty weird.  The clarity of the map is also bad.  To make it easier to see she should have used circles instead of squares.  The image seems to be very pixely which doesn't help your map look very good. As far as the balance of the map it would look better if she kept her data source and name together.  Otherwise I think the balance is ok.  The visual hierarchy of the map is where she needs improvement.  This map was not well thought out.  The projection of the United States is pretty poor, and she left out Alaska.  In her note under the legend she says she doesn't have data for Hawaii or Alaska.  Why would she include only Hawaii (very distorted) on the map then? 

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.

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.