Module 3 covered Cartographic Design and Gestalt Principles. This week's readings and lectures covered the history of survey, land partitioning practices, and how to use design to build better maps. We were introduced to Gestalt Principles and how to apply them to our map to convey information effectively. This week's primary principles included Visual Hierarchy, Balance, Contrast, and Figure-Ground Screening.
In my map (above), I used ArcGIS Pro to show the location of public schools in Washington DC. I used Visual Hierarchy in this map by choosing symbology that ranged in size for each type of school.
I used balance by choosing lighter colors for local streets, parks, and waterways in comparison to the darker colors I used for the major highways, school symbols, neighborhood labels, and polygon outlines. I used geoprocessing to clip the local streets to the Ward 7 polygon so that local streets were not represented outside of the area of interest. I also edited labels to show one neighborhood name from each of the 7 neighborhoods shown. I created annotation labels for the parks to edit and move the park labels as needed to make the park labels clean and clear.
I used colorbrewer2.org to help me choose colors that worked well together for the school symbology and the Ward 7 polygon in the inset map. I wanted the colors to be different and complementary to each other. The Gestalt Principles used in this map help the viewer to efficiently understand where each type of public school is in relation to local parks, neighborhoods, roads, and waterways.
Excellent Emily!!!
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