Monday, January 16, 2017

GIS 6005 Lab 1: Map Design

Lab 1: City of Austin recreation opportunities map.

              Visual contrast: The requirements for the lab drove some of my choices in addressing the five design principles. Having only Travis County as the displayed map boundary made contrast with the background relatively simple. I chose beige with 20% transparency as a muted color for the county that would bring it out from the background while allowing for the other features to maintain contrast on top. The colors and outline of the other features were chosen to contrast with the Travis County polygon without dominating the layout.

               Legibility: I sized the text of the title and legend to maintain legibility without taking up too much space in the layout. There was a problem with recognizing the extent and locations of golf courses and waterways, so I experimented with various outline options. I ended up using minimal outlines (0.4 mm) of the same color as the main symbol; this allows  for much greater legibility for both symbols without cluttering the map the way a darker outline would.

               Figure-ground organization: This wasn't a huge consideration since there were so few elements to include and no basemap beyond Travis County. I experimented with various colors for the layout background, but each one conflicted with Travis County; I would have needed to make Travis County a more prominent color to make it stand out from any colored background, and that would have created issues with making the rest of the (more important) symbology stand out.

               Hierarchical organization: The purpose of the map is to highlight the locations of recreation opportunities, so the layers for recreation centers, waterways, and golf courses are given prominence. The raw umber triangles stand out from the tan background better than the original circles I used, and the use of outlines of the same color around golf courses and water bodies bring them forward visually. Roads are important, too, and are prominent in the layout but not dominating by being set to 50% grey. The legend was reordered to reflect the level of importance for each item.


               Balance: A landscape orientation was chosen in order to balance the blank space around the Travis County map. The large title text in the upper right corner is balanced by the moderately-sized legend and grey scale bar in the lower left corner. The upper left of the Travis County map extends a little further than the lower right, so the grey orientation arrow and author/date/source text make up for the extra blank space.

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