Lab #7: Surf’s Up in Nosara

Nosara is a popular tourist destination in the Central American country of Costa Rica.  In this lab I was asked to redesign a map of Nosara aiming to appeal to American surfers and to include only 10 point features.  I thank Michigan State University and Nosara Travel & Rentals for this map.

Here’s the original map:

Original Map (PDF)

And here’s the map I made:

Revised Map (PDF)

As you can see I made some changes. Two of the point features I chose for the lab are not on the original map.  I located them on Google Maps after reading about them on TripAdvisor.  I also visited the websites of all of these point features (except the “Gas Station”) as well as many of the places that didn’t make the cut.

I also excluded some of the polygons.  I determined that American surfers aren’t likely to need to know where the school is or FUCAN (which I discovered is a local trade school).  I also decided that the “Library” and “Soccer Field” features were unnecessary.  I kept the clinic, the police station, the post office, and the bus station as these features seemed more important to an American tourist.

I also removed “Nosara Travel”.  Not that it’s not a good feature, but it’s just not a good polygon feature, and being limited to 10 point features it just didn’t make the cut.

I made some changes to the roads based on what I saw on Google Maps.  For instance “EBAIS/Health Clinic” is south of a road in Google Maps so I made it so in my map.  I also noticed the road past the bridge over “Rio Nosara” branched into two directions and so included that on the map.

This was the final lab.  Hope you have enjoyed this blog!

You will most likely see me again once I have something interesting and cartography-related to blog about.  Or maybe I will start another blog and then I will make a post on here telling you where you can read my new blog.

Thank you all.

Lab #6: Michigan Map With Adobe Illustrator

With the help of Adobe Illustrator I have touched up the map in last week’s post.

Hope you enjoy this map even more than the last edition.

Click to view the PDF: Road, Bus, and Rail in Michigan (2nd Edition).

There is a slight black outline around all of the colored text and also around the associated text in the legend. This helps to improve the contrast with the background and with the highways.

I also adjusted the kerning and leading in the text.  For some I reduced kerning and leading to reduce clutter.  For others I found that increasing kerning helped make it easier to position the text so as to avoid obscuring too much of the highways.

Another thing I introduced was a faint gray outline around the state of Michigan.  This was difficult to do in ArcMap because the map of the state is derived from a layer that initially displayed counties, and so any outline would’ve also shown boundaries of the counties.  This would have distracted from the main purpose of the map.  In Adobe Illustrator I used the Pathfinder window to merge the shapes of the counties together into a single shape and then applied the outline.

Lab #5: Michigan Map with ArcMap

For this lab I was to create a map of Michigan intended for tourists to be read at highway rest stops.

One thing that can be a big help if you’re a tourist is to know your traveling options.  As this is just a map of Michigan I included only land transportation, no airplanes or ferries.

I titled it: Road, Bus, and Rail in Michigan (click link to view PDF).  The map differentiates cities based on whether or not they have Amtrak Stations and whether they are bus or rail.  It also includes the highways.  You’ll notice that for the symbols I used differences in hue as well as lightness to show which cities had bus (lighter green) or rail (darker red) stations.  The difference in lightness would help colorblind readers tell the difference between cities with bus stations and rail stations.  I bolded the text for bus and rail station cities for the sake of emphasis as well as making them a darker shade of green and red respectively both for emphasis and to associate the text clearly with the symbols.  I also put the state capital, “Lansing” in bold for the sake of emphasis.  It lacks a station, but since the capital and other cities without stations are all in black the contrast in color should prevent readers from getting confused.  Another thing I did with color to help with reading the map is that the Amtrak railroads are in red to create a clear association with the color of the stations.

I had to do a great deal of compromising with how to position the text.  ArcMap is a useful tool, but it is not as flexible of a tool in handling text.  There is quite a bit of kerning and leading that would have improved the readability of the text.  In the next lab I will edit this map further in Adobe Illustrator.

Lab #4: Mapping America

Today we look at a map of the United States.

All of the text I placed here.  I used the serif font, Times New Roman for natural features and the sans serif font, Trebuchet MS for political features (in this case just city names).

Map-making takes a lot of compromise.  “San Francisco” in particular is in a less than ideal position for a city name.  But I had to squeeze it in next to “San Jose” and “Central Valley”.  Another difficult one was “Mt Rainier”.  The text crosses the boundary between land and sea, which is usually best avoided.  However, there were limited options in how to fit it next to “Cascade Range” and “Seattle”.  But the most important thing with “Mt Rainier” is that text is clearly tied to the symbol.  To make the connection clearer I made the symbols for peaks the same colors (for stroke and fill) as I did the text.

In order to fit the text “Mt Shasta” on the map without it crossing into the ocean I decided to abbreviate it.  I then decided to keep the names of mountain peaks consistent and abbreviate all of them.  I found that to fit the “Appalachian Mountains” also required abbreviation, but consistency was not realistic for labeling the mountain ranges given how short “Rocky Mts” is.  I decided not to include punctuation in the abbreviations since that could be mistaken for symbols.  The period in “St. Lawrence River” on the other hand does not present this problem because it is within a single line.

The arrow next to “Chesapeake Bay” is called a “callout”.  You want to avoid using those if at all possible.  However I could not put “Chesapeake Bay” over the bay without obscuring it, and there are other inlets lower along the map that could’ve been mistaken for it without the callout.

The texture of the terrain sometimes made contrast difficult.  For better contrast thin stroke lines were applied to the outlines of text for the “Mountain Ranges” and to “Mountain Peaks”.  Given the similarity in color for “Central Valley” to its surroundings I decided this was not enough to create sufficient contrast for its category “Other Physical Features” (the green text features) and so used a “drop shadow” effect from “Stylize” under “Effects” for all of the text in this category.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this map and learning a little bit about map-making.

Lab #3 Comparing Typefaces and Some Logo Ideas

Today for my third lab I present to you my readers a look into different typefaces, and a look at two logos I have designed.

Comparing Typefaces

I have compared the serif fonts Aparajita, Birch Std, and Bodoni MT, the sans serif fonts Impact, Trebuchet MS, and Consolas, and two decorative fonts Giddyup Std and Chiller. Here is the PDF file for you to take a look: Typefaces

Why are we looking at typefaces when this is supposed to be a cartography blog?  Because typography is very important to cartography.  In fact cartography introduces special considerations in typography.  Font must work at small point sizes and odd angles.  This can limit your options considerably.  Out of all of these typefaces I only found “Bodoni MT”, “Trebuchet MS” and “Consolas” as legible at size 6 pt font zoomed in at 100%.  At the 11 pt font I have set it at for the PDF some of the fonts are difficult to read but they are still legible.  This highlights the importance of making sure the font used in making your map is legible at a small point size.  It is also important to know how close the audience will be to the map.  The further away people are the larger the font size will need to be for the text to be legible.

Why else is font important?  The appropriate font will depend on what the text is about and the effect you want to produce in the audience.  It is a common convention to use serif fonts for natural features and sans serif for political and culture features.  But there is more to it than that.  Fonts give the text personality.  Notice how “Impact” is a loud font that instantly grabs your attention.  Even more noticeable are the decorative fonts, “Giddyup Std” and “Chiller”.  “Giddyup Std” evokes a fun mood.  “Chiller” is spooky.  While my experimentation with these fonts shows they are poor fonts to use in cartography they could be used as titles for maps.  “Giddyup Std” could fit a theme park, and “Chiller” could fit a haunted house map.

Logo Ideas

 

This first one may be unfamiliar to you if you have not been to East Lansing.  “The Peanut Barrel” is a popular bar and grill across the street from Michigan State’s campus.  I went with the font “Ravie” since it gives it a wild, fun effect but not too outlandish of an effect.  I went with the same consideration for the Sponge Effect applied to the brown color I picked for the text.  This gives the color a liquid-like appearance and so may remind people of beer.  I have kept “the” lowercase.  This is in keeping with the history as the sign at the entrance has also used a lowercase “the” for as long as I can remember.  It is also good for the visual hierarchy as “Peanut Barrel” is a more important part of the text than the word “the”.

 

And here is the next logo…

 

 

Greenpeace is an activist organization that advocates on issues related to the environment.  Having majored in political science I know a political organization needs a logo that draws attention to itself, reinforces its message, and still looks serious.  I used “Wide Latin” as its “G” is creative enough to grab attention but the font still looks serious.  I chose the colors green, yellow, and brown to reflect a “nature” theme.  As green and yellow stand out more and are more visually appealing I chose to use them for the text itself, and to use brown for the elliptical background.  For brown I applied “Texturizer” and “Smudge Stick” from the “Effect” menu in Adobe Illustrator.  This gives it a textured appearance, which represents soil and supports the theme of “nature”, but is subtle enough not to overpower the text.

Lab #2: Adventures in Adobe Illustrator

For those readers confused about the title Lab # 1 was constructing the blog in the first place.

For this lab (Lab #2) I investigated Adobe Illustrator, learning about its various tools, and I have two images to show you.

Stained Glass Star

The star was created using Adobe Illustrator. A white circle was placed inside a purple 8-pointed star, and then they were grouped together by selecting them both and clicking the “Object” menu at the top and then clicking “Group” (You may also use Ctrl+G). Then under the “Effect” window under “Texture” I selected “Stained Glass” and after adjusting “cell size”, “border thickness”, and “light intensity” got this amazing star.

For the above image the original had only those pictures on the top. I made new pictures but with different colors, and gave each of them plausible labels as to what the bottom symbols could mean on a map.

To explain my choice of color for the first one, blue goes well with “Water Wells”. No pun intended. Though it makes intuitive sense it could be an issue if any of the wells are too close to rivers or bodies of water, although that could be remedied by making those a much lighter shade of blue.

It makes intuitive sense to make crop circles green, since crops are plants and plants are associated with “green”, hence the use of a green circle. The color “green” may also appeal to the audience’s ideas about who may have made the circles. This would go best placed on farmland represented as a light brown. The darker shade of the crop circle symbol would allow colorblind readers to still read the map.

Yellow triangles are often used as warning signs, so a map could use a yellow triangle in a yellow circle to represent a “Hazardous Waste Site”. The outer ring is black to make it easier to spot.

I went with black to represent a “Capital City”. This color is often used on political maps. Black is a particularly good choice if the map contains roads and the roads are in red.

A map displaying “Military Bases” would probably have terrain on it, and black would be a good noticeable color in contrast with green and brown colors for terrain, gray for urban areas, and red for major roads.

The last symbol I labeled “Heritage Site”. As it is shaped like a teepee it could be used as a marker of the location of sites on a national park or a reservation which are important to the heritage of a Native American tribe. Once again I have chosen black because it stands out well against terrain and because it contrasts well with red roads. This last one raises an ethical issue. Not all Native American tribes used teepees so it could be taken as stereotyping. Unless the map is being commissioned by the tribe itself, a good cartographer would research the tribe’s history first and even then contact representatives of the tribe to make sure they would not be offended by the choice of symbol.