Own Your Map Lab

The purpose of the Own Your Map Lab was not only to practice finding and utilizing various tools in ArcGIS, but also to begin developing a personal map-making style. Aesthetics in presentation are as important as demonstrating proficiency with cartographic skills.

This lab was a bit time-consuming, much of it due to a significant amount of experimenting. The majority of my cartographic experience has been with manual drafting, but now my drafting board has been relegated to the role of laptop desk for those days when I want to be working while comfortably seated on the sofa.  It works.

Own Your Map ~ Final Product

Because this map may be viewed by someone unfamiliar with UWF, I decided to spell out the university's name in the title.  By doing this, there will be no doubt that "UWF" means the University of West Florida rather than, say, University of Warm Fuzzies or University of What Fun!  I stayed with a color scheme which matches UWF's official colors and opted to minimize the use of colors which might cause issues for people with color-blindness.  A color-blindness resource I found helpful was http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/colorblindness2.htm.

An issue I had was trying to balance the spaces on the map.  While this is easily done when drafting manually, I had a harder time with the data frame of Escambia County.  This was due to the nature of Santa Rosa Island extending so far past the boundary of the main part of the county.  I am hopeful that with more experience I will find ways to compensate for similar situations.  This was an excellent lab for trying out a variety of tools and techniques.