Lab 1 Communicating GIS

 This week I learned the a lot about the 5 basic map design principles:

▪ Visual contrast

▪ Legibility

▪ Figure-ground organization

▪ Hierarchical organization

▪ Balance

I created 5 maps looking into different symbology and labeling features.

This map highlight different areas in San Francisco. In the map I kept all my text font to be Calibi to have the map remain consistent. For water I made my font Italic and chose a dark blue to contrast against the lighter blue water. For parks I chose a dark green with a white halo around it to increase visibility against the green symbology of the park. When labeling the general areas I chose a black with a white halo to improve visibility and contrast. With the smaller islands I used a line callout to avoid having the font very small causing it to be illegible. With the neighborhoods I used a black font with a balloon callout because these are very small areas and I wanted the neighborhoods to stand out and not look like the general areas. For the twin peaks and hills I created curved labels with a light gray font since these are geographic landmarks.