Map Critiques Module 1 GIS 5007

 This week's lesson was a history lesson in cartography and understanding basic mapmaking. The assignment was to identify a well designed map and a poorly designed map. 

For my well designed map, I chose a national park map of Capulin Volcano National Monument in NW New Mexico. It is a park my family and I visited when we took a road trip shortly after returning from Germany. 

https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/collection-item.htm?pg=7347320&cid=305fb7af-a71b-469b-941e-a98b439c882f&id=2d23d9a1-1dc8-423e-b058-1b67cc15b8ae&sid=ddf76276-66ad-45ec-a06d-d4f7651713bc&p=1&sort=relevance

    I chose this map as a well designed map for its simplicity and getting straight to the point. The map is well labeled and identifies the most important features in the park for visitors. It identifies the different trails, their distances, as well as the road and other important facilities. The map is neat and all the essential map elements are easily identifiable and read. Also, the scale bar is an effective measurement for guests of multiple nationalities.


For my poor map design, I found an example on Esri's website identifying maps that you do not want to imitate.

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6b168cb3aeb44c84b3ce04ca7fe5222e

First and foremost in my eyes, the neatline is driving me nuts as it cuts in the middle of other map elements. The title is not centered and not spelled correctly. The scale bar is an odd distance, and not especially relevant to this information. What information you ask? Well, the legend is the only way to identify what we are looking at on this map, and it is apparently the attainment of education for people over 24 in Colorado. 

This map looks to be thrown together in about 2.5 minutes by a blind person. Im sure the information is important, but the map maker in question doesn't seem to want to show that importance. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orientation GIS 5007 Blog Post

 Hi! I'm Chris. Please see my story map here ! I am a USAF veteran utilizing the VA VR&E program. I am a graduate student looking to expand on my GIS knowledge. I served as a Geospatial Analyst for 12.5 years and currently hold a B.S. in Geography and B.S. in GIS. This seemed the next logical step to utilize my education benefits.  Upon completion, I hope to utilize my skills to improve my current companies GIS practices.
Read more

Module 5: Parsing Data, Creating XY Data, and Geocoding Addresses

      This weeks lab was data intense. We had to find and download data, clean the data, and import it into ArcGIS pro. Using data from the state of Florida and the US census bureau, we were able to identify and locate schools in Manatee county, Florida. Once we had the data, we had to clean it up within excel and parse the data so that each attribute had is own column. When the data was clean, we could add the data into Pro. With the data in the program, we could create a locator and geocode the addresses within the table. Once geocoded, we were able to place the points onto the map.     This labs focus on data manipulation and its importance will play a factor in the coming weeks. We will be utilizing these tools to help us in the final project so we can properly portray our maps.  Link to webmap:  https://pns.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=81d9894c2bef4f89adab4ec687536c68 
Read more
Image
 Lab 2 was a success and an absolute wonderful refresher for me. Cartography is probably my favorite thing about GIS. There is something about seeing data displayed on a map that piques my interest. I had some issues during the lab, however, it wasn't from the program or the map creation itself. I found myself rereading the lab instructions multiple times to figure out some of the processes needed for the completion of the lab. Luckily, my peers posted in the help forum to help me fix the issues and understand where I was going wrong. Additionally, I enjoyed learning new and better ways to create certain map elements. I had issues with dynamic text before but for some reason it just clicked in this lab.
Read more