Lab 10: It's over!

There she is! I think my mapping skills have come along nicely since when I first started out. Though after awhile those green dollar sign started looking like little trogdors running across my screen...

Map of the Week (map 8)

Here's a funky bivariate map that I probably wouldn't have thought of on my own. The whole "approximate distance from the river" thing definitely skews this graph to make the midwest look like a festering cesspool of West Nile. Or maybe it is? I dig the 3D element to this map, though.

Lab 9

Here it is! So... a few issues. FOR SOME INCREDIBLY INFURIATING REASON the gradient affected the color of my map, though that's never happened before... the layer containing the gradient was beneath the layer containing the states, I dunno what the issue was. I improved the map from lab 7, minimized white space, corrected scales and what not. I also made this map an (almost) perfect square, as per the instructions.

(serious compare and contrast below)

The map printed certainly gave a different image than this map, developed for web display. For one, the printed map barely shows the yellow gradient at all, though unfortunately this might also be due to the low ink in my cartridge...
I do think that the printed image has a very nice contrast between the classes, and that both maps are easy to read. I thought and rethought the elimination of the legend/AL/HI boxes, finally deciding that my map looked best without them and that my scales were lined up well enough to be intuitive. Naturally there was some pixilation/distortion of my printed map that make it look less professional than the web display, but such issues could be easily fixed via higher resolutions and a better printer.

Lab 8

Behold! Lab 8! I know my title is a little boring but I worked really hard to make this map pretty. I made sure the scale was correct this time and all my houses are PERFECT. ugh that took awhile. Also some nice figure/ground interplay and playing around with fonts. yay it's ovar! Oh wait, I waited till today to finish this lab so there's another one due Thursday >_<

Map o the week coming soon, probably a double post...

Map of the week (map 7)

While everyone else was looking for maps of the 2008 election, I stumbled on this map of the so-called "purple America" of 2004. For one, the sheer amount of data I see here is staggering, it must have taken weeks of data collecting to find it all for EACH county in the entire United States. Second, the red to blue gradient they developed for this map was really clever. Their point was to show that America is growing more and more moderate, and throughout the midwest and east coast one can really see that. This map was highly informative but also highly stylized, with ALL the emphasis on the map, and a small and minimal title and legend. I likey.

Lab 8 coming soon!

Map of the Week (map 6)

Here's a rather informative proportional symbol map. It's also a good example of how hard a map can be to read when there's too much similarity in the figure/ground. I did like the way the cartographer chose to display the data, though. The yellow is a striking color and the circles are intuitive and easy to read. However, the way he had to pull out the data for the middle eastern countries makes the map look too cluttered.