GIS5007 Module 2: Typography

I'm coming to the realization that I'm becoming more of a GIS/map nerd than I thought I'd ever be. I think a large part of it comes down to my perfectionism, to a fault; however, I also want to believe it's because I long for a creative outlet, especially when I'm stuck making a certain type of map at work. They're not bad maps by any means, but there's a certain formula and structure to them that doesn't allow for much experimentation, which speaking of experimentation...

It was so nice to finally get my grubby GIS hands on more creative map-making again! This week's module focused on typography, which made us consider the importance of labels and how we stylize, set, and size them can affect the legibility of features. The lab walked us through the process of building a solid foundation for a map layout that focuses on the major features throughout Florida. These features were rivers, swamps/marshes, cities, and counties.

One of my first assignments at work was to create and print a large map of the Peace River area, with nearly all road and river features labeled. I remember how daunting that task was, especially trying to wrangle the labels properly into place. Looking back, this lab could have prepared me for that a lot better. Haha!

Overall, the assignment gave us creative freedom to customize the map of Florida while ensuring we contained and labeled specific features. This meant that we had to be careful not to have overlapping features or their labels. Legibility is the goal! Customizing is like candy — sweet on occasion, some I don't like so much, but I love trying them all.

In ArcGIS Pro, we were given a GDB containing the following feature classes: capital, counties, lakes and swamps, major cities, and rivers. These feature classes would serve as the basis for our map layout. The assignment instructions didn't specify, but if I recall correctly, we weren't barred from using the ESRI basemaps. I wanted to take on a more creative challenge and build everything myself.

I had a blast figuring out what symbols I wanted to use and how I wanted to label them. I prefer to keep things simple and clean. I knew, out of the gate, I wanted to have very few colors yet distinct symbols for each feature.

For the water features — rivers and swamp/marsh — I wanted to keep them the same turquoise color and proper case, but in different sizes. For the labels that were not well aligned, I wanted to take control of them, so I converted those features' labels into annotations. I kept the rivers a teal color, while the swamp/marsh, I made sure to use the swamp symbol from the ArcPro gallery. I did tweak the swamp/marsh symbology a little in the settings since I didn't like the default white fill in it—it didn't feel right to me, since white meant snow or emptiness, in my mind. I changed the symbol fill to a light blue instead to more accurately represent the wetland.

I applied the "Populated Place" text symbol option to both the state capital and the major cities to standardize their labels. But for their point symbols, I made sure to differentiate them by using a smaller orange point for the major cities, and the state capital has a unique point symbol that I made somewhat from scratch. I wanted the state capital to be a star symbol but also have a circle background, which, funny enough, the ArcPro gallery does not have a circle with a star symbol in the center. So, using the properties of the regular star symbol, I added another circle graphic/point layer to the symbol, which became the orange circle background to the state capital point. Seeing all the orange points brought home the idea of the Florida orange, which had been etched into my brain the longer I worked on the layout.

And so, because of the orange points, I wanted to go the extra mile and create artistic flair by adding orange accents throughout my map. I am actually very proud of what I was able to accomplish within just ArcPro itself. I did not use any outsourced services or get anything outside of the program. (There wasn't any orange-fruit related symbols in the gallery when I checked for this project, surprisingly! Random note to self: there are grapes, however. Haha.) I simply used what was provided in the graphics and text options. It required a lot of ingenuity working with circles, arcs, and drawn polygons to create my orange fruit-themed accents, which I believe really bring the map together in terms of fun, whimsy, and driving home that Florida-core. The placement of the oranges was intentional, drawing the reader's attention back and forth between them in hopes of attracting them to read what's in between. The green title and its white dashed outline are similar to the outline found in the legend, which further highlights and circles back to the title: Major Features of Florida.

There's definitely a lot of fine, personal touches I put into this map layout that I'm hoping to continue improving or at least experimenting more with in the future. Looking forward to what else I can do with maps from here!

Major Features of Florida. It includes several features: the state capital, major cities, rivers, swamp/marsh, and counties. I worked extra hard on making the orange fruit accents from scratch with just my ArcPro arsenal of graphics at my disposal.