Communicating in GIS Module 1: Map Design and Typography

 

For this map, we want to showcase new activities in Travis County. I wanted to make my map look neutral in the background so that the golf and recreation centers could be quickly noticeable by the map viewer. 

As I created this map, I kept in mind the 5 map design principles: visual contrast, legibility, figure-ground organization, hierarchal organization, and balance. 

I created visual contrast by adding a subtle green background color that would compliment my map boundary. I used a clear, bold font in my map title and I used the same font in my map legend and map credits. I still want the rec centers and golf courses to pop off the map, so for figure-ground organization, I chose to remove borders and use transparent backgrounds for the map frame and legend. To create a visual hierarchy, I centered the map title and map frame and kept this information at the top of the map. To create interest and balance, I placed my map legend adjacent to the map scale and north arrow and overlapped the map frame.

For the San Francisco map layout, I used bold, capital letters and the largest font to make the city name stand out on the map. For surrounding city names and general map features, I kept similar formatting, but I made the surrounding city name font sizes smaller than “San Francisco”. For water feature names, I used a blue, italicized, serif font to label the bays and lakes in the area. For parks, I used a green halo around white text for parks. I made the park text size smaller than the city labels. For landmarks, I used simple and small black text to label the golden gate bridge. Finally, for topographic features, I used a neutral brown color with a dark gray shadow. I tilted the text and spaced out the lettering to illustrate how the feature the text was labeling may look.