Zombies, Black Bears, and the Meadowlands: Mapping Social Environments: Wk 2 NYC prep and Good Mapping Elements

Please hand in
-your Highline maps

>History of the Highline

>Food

>Art & music

>Transportation

>Bathrooms

-your chance vs action writing assignment.

Map Overlays
You can overlay 2 maps for free without photoshop by going here:
How can you get more information by combining, or cross-referencing multiple data sets?

What is being compared?

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Good Mapping Elements
Give yourself one point for each of the 17 things below that are part of your Highline map.

Map Has a Clear Purpose

What is the map intention? Are you achieving it? Designing the concept of a map is typically how cartographers begin. Ideas are driven by purpose.

Maps help people understand their place on Earth. Whether you’re mapping geology, census data or watersheds, your map’s purpose helps readers spatially understand a theme or subject.

Map Titles Reflect the Author’s Intention

The map title should reflect the purpose of the map. The title is usually based on the information being displayed in your map. It usually includes your theme and geographic location.

Your title shouldn’t leave your readers guessing its purpose. The map title reveals important information to the reader. It’s the intention worded to the map content.

Ensure Correct Map Extent and Coverage

Maps help us view the world in a scaled down fashion. But how scaled down should your map be? Understanding the scale of your map features is one of the first steps in map design.

Is your data the scale of a continent or an airport. Large and small-scale maps are expressed in ratios. They’re usually rounded such as 1:100. Pan to the center so your main feature is front-and-center. Alternatively, you should ensure other important features are included as a reference. The map making process must always consider extent and coverage.

Define a Projection (or make decisions about intentional distortion)

The Earth is curved. Map projections flatten our curved Earth and always adds distortion. They transform the sphere on a plane. Cartographers display maps in two dimensions.

Whether you want to preserve area, direction or scale, choosing your map projection is not always an easy task. After defining your projection, list the projection in your map’s metadata.

Give Perspective with an Inset Map

It’s one of the essential map elements. A well-designed map often includes a key map. A key map puts your geography into perspective at a smaller scale. It’s a smaller, separate map that shows the extent of the map in relation to a larger area.

But they’re also used to clarify features on a map. Inset maps can focus in on areas of interest. They enlarge features in smaller maps giving readers more perspective.

Decide Your Labeling/Annotation

Turn nothing into something. Labels need to be placed with purpose. But busy maps with too much labeling is confusing with no better place than a trash bin.

The general rule is that labels go left-right and south-north. Font face, color and size need to be considered. Labels can follow the curvature in features. They shouldn’t overlap lines because they become unreadable. It’s good practice to offset preferably on top. Annotation font size can be scaled larger for more important features.

View All Ingredients in Your Map with Legends

Maps are abstractions of reality. They use map symbols to generalize our complex world we live in. Legends tell the map reader what the polygons, lines, points or grid cells represents. Map legends explain to the reader what these features represent. They are one of the most important map elements to consider during map making.

Readers can immediately learn everything in your map from start to finish like a list of ingredients in a recipe. Keep your legend clean with items aligned to the left. Remove unnecessary items that aren’t in your maps. Generally, legends follow the order points, lines and polygons.

Measure Length with Scale Bars

A scale bar is a map element that graphically shows the distance of units on a map. They are another effective way to gain a better understanding of scale.

Readers like to glance at scale bars. They need a way to scale feature on a map as a way to measure distance. Scale bars used in map making are practical and generate instant answers for size and measurements.

Know the Date of Production

In crunch time, it’s important to understand the date of production. Was the map created this decade? Is the information in the map still relevant?

Things are always changing in our dynamic world. Dates of production eliminates future confusion. It can hit you like a ton of bricks. It’s surprising how often map production dates are missing.

Metadata is Your Map’s Narrator

Cartographers use maps to tell a story. Metadata is like having a narrator tell readers about the story. It’s a summary of the data and information about the map.

Metadata is not always the most exciting topic in GIS. But knowing the origin of your map data is insanely important. Include metadata about the spatial data and all of a sudden you’ve given readers a narration of your map.

Orientate Yourself with a North Arrow

Just like your standard compass, north arrows gives the orientation of north direction. North arrows are one of the essential map elements you see on almost every map. Not to be confused with the magnetic north – our dynamic planet’s magnetic north is always changing.

North arrows point in the geographic north cardinal direction. With little effort, readers can orientate themselves northerly. Map making has to consider north orientation.

Fill Out Data Sources Information

It’s easy to cut corners and forget to list your maps data sources. Because to be honest, not really a lot of people tend to look at them.

Just like a thesis paper, maps can include references. During map making, you can insert footnotes with a list of sources including author and year. When someone looks at your sources, you have your bases cove

Ensure Standard Symbology is Used

Symbology is the cartographic language that is communicated to the audience. It’s the graphic representation of real world features on a map. We learn the maps story through well-chosen symbology.

One of the main goals of cartography is to ensure individuals reviewing the map can understand its significance. You instantly lose the confidence of the map reader with inconsistent symbols

Use Appropriate Scale Symbology

Symbols on a map are like words in a book. They have to be intuitive. They describe information to the reader. And symbology has to use the appropriate scale

Some symbology is universal. Cartographers are concerned how symbols are perceived on a map. Symbols are sometimes exaggerated in map making so readers can quickly understand. A small-scale map could have a city represented as a point. Zoom into a large-scale map and the city is better displayed as a polygon boundary.

Select Colors that Reflect a Theme and Purpose

Color catches your eye. It’s usually the first place you look in a map. Your eyes will beam in on color. Color is used to clarify features. It increases design possibilities. Maps reveal information on location and attributes. Combined with color, it depicts relationships and adds visual clarity.

People respond to color differently. Blue is generally water and positivity. Green is often used for vegetation. Brown is often used for mountains and dry land. Red often represents important features. ColorBrewer is a helpful resource to choose meaningful colors in your map making process.

Be Creative with Different Map Types

Poorly designed maps are difficult to understand. For example, having a thematic map with too many color shades easily frustrates readers. The idea of the map won’t be conveyed.

A choropleth map is good for population data. A climate map is good for showing temperature change. Bar graphs are good at showing change of numerical values. Cartographers have plenty of tools in their toolbox for selecting the right map type.

Limit the Number of Features

When you have too many features in your map, it quickly becomes a horrible game of “Where’s Waldo”. Because in the end, you are trying to communicate that one map's purpose. As soon as you add unnecessary features, your map may be deemed a cartographic nightmare.

With too many features, information isn’t passed to the reader. It gets miscommunicated. When it’s all said and done, you may be better off splitting a map into two. Having too many features complicates your map.

(From GIS Geography 33 Map Elements to Include in Cartographic Design: A ‘How to’ Guide to Map Making)

Here's what you'll need in NYC this Sat

-rigid notebook for drawing maps
-pencil for map drawing
-Peers' Cell
-Cell # for 2 buddies
-dress for the weather
-pocket $ (20 for lunch)
*Bus leaves the gym at 8:45am. Please be there at 8:40
(AKA the bus will no longer be there at 8:46 am)

__________

Here are some useful links about The Whitney Museum

The article that started the controversy

Works that were removed (and some returned)

__________

Manhattan Population Explorer:

Is this map telling a story? How?

Minimum Wage Map

Country to Country Net Migration Map

In class: Make a Snail Trail Map

Navigate to, and then walk all the way around Cameron Pond. Every time you stop, write a number. On the back of the page, write the number and the name of one new thing you noticed. Include land marks for reference and a Legend.

Due next week:

Whitney Museum Maps with Metadata
On one piece of paper
-draw a snail trail map while you're walking through the museum
-show the front of the museum
-visit every floor
-use a different symbol set for each floor and show in your Key or Legend
-for each floor identify the location of the piece of art that was the most important to you
On another piece of paper
-write two sentences for each piece of art (two sentences per floor) explaining why that is so

How could your map be used by others?
Does it have a narrative?
What could happen if the data sets are combined.