GIS Blog: Melanie A. Sutton

This lab addressed how to create a map of Marathon, Florida and its neighboring islands using ArcGIS Pro and then export these features into Adobe Illustrator for labeling in accordance with typographic principles. Within Adobe Illustrator, key tools used including clipping, color swatches (for consistent use of colors across different features/labels), and typing on a path (for water body labels). Additional options within the Align and Layers tools were critical when designing various essential map elements, particularly the legend and scale bar. Customization to this map included the following: Type distinctions for nominal feature labels – In this case, different kinds of features were labeled using different type families (e.g., cities were labeled with Arial font whereas islands/keys were labeled with a more scripted font). This allows the viewer to more readily discern the formal areas (cities) compared to the less formal land masses (islands/keys). Type distincti

Map Evaluation Synopsis: Well-designed Map This map meets its intended aim to convey state-based and county-based information on the ancestry with the largest population in the provided areas. Three design principles done particularly well in this map include the following: Map Substantial Information (Tufteisms 1, 2, 3, 4, and 20) The cartographer has included a comprehensive set of ancestry labels for visualization at the state and county levels. Don’t Lie with Maps (Tufteisms 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, and 13) The cartographer has utilized the same scale in all maps with county-level data so accurate side-by-side comparisons between regions can be made. Map Layout Matters (Tufteism 19) The cartographer has effectively used the map real estate by placing map elements (e.g., the legend and data source information) in otherwise underutilized white space. Improvements to this map for consistency would include coloring all water bodies similarly (blue for oceans and for la

Welcome to my Summer of the Crab Story Map Tour , located here:  https://arcg.is/1e0G0O Before joining the GIS program at UWF I used a number of freeware GIS-based tools for projects working with marine biologists and public health professionals. This story map tour shows a few of the photos I gathered in one of these projects looking for squareback crabs along Florida's shorelines. I am looking forward to enhancing the data analysis associated with this project using the skills I am acquiring this semester in Computer Cartography.