map critique 5

This map was taken from http://www.businessinsider.com/22-gorgeous-maps-that-define-the-united-states-of-america-2013-7#just-because-america-catches-fire-a-lot-of-the-time-does-that-mean-americans-leave-of-course-not-9 . This map shows the cumulative fire energy energy released by wildfires in the United States since 2001. The figure ground of this map is very poor and it is hard to distinguish between the background color and darker color of the map. There is no legend so that makes the map somewhat hard to interpret. The very small numbers inside the boxes are very hard to read so the legibility is very poor. The balance is very good with your attention being drawn to the areas with a higher output of fire energy, this is done through the bright colors like yellow being used.

map critique 4

This map was produced by the New York Times (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/17/opinion/17coontz2-map/17coontz2-map-popup.png)  and it shows countries and whether they offer paid maternal leave or not. The legibility is very good on this map you can clearly read everything on this map without straining to read it. Figure-ground and visual hierarchy are also very good because the mapped area pops out from the background and your attention is drawn to the important areas of the map and doesn't distract your attention. Clarity is very good all the edges are sharp and it does not blur at the edges. This is overall a very well made map.

map critique 3

This map was taken from https://support.google.com/maps/answer/68384?hl=en. it shows the areas around the world where google streetview is available. This is a very well made map and does its purpose very very well. the figure-ground is very good and you can easily distinguish the area being mapped from the background water. Though since there is no legend or title on the map if you didnt know where it came from and just saw the map you may not know what was being mapped at that moment.the legability is good and you can easily read all the country names on map. Overall this is a very good map.

map critique 2

This map was taken from http://sportsinternthoughts.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/usa_soccer_3leagues_h1.png and was produced by Bill Turianski. It shows the spread of Major League Soccer fandom in the United States. I personally really like this map because I am a very huge soccer fan. The clarity between the colors is very distinguishable and you can clearly see where regions start and stop but without a legend its a bit hard to distinguish what some of the colors stand for since the same color is used for multiple clubs. Though the legibility on some of the writing on the right side is difficult to read. But with all the writing on the right side the author did a very good job of visually balancing the mapping area. the figure-ground is a bit odd as the water is to light in color and is slightly difficult to distinguish where the divide between teh basemap and water is. 

map critique 1

This map was taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330290/London-2012-Olympics-New-pictures-stadiums-nearly-ready.html. It is a map the was produced for the London Olympics in 2012 and it shows the area surrounding Olympic park. This  map does not have great clarity as road lines are not the most clear and blur together in some spots. The figure-ground is very poor because the map is very busy and draws your attention all over the map instead of drawing to the direct area around Olympic park. Though the balance of the map is very good having no areas on the map that that seem blank and it is very full.

exercise 10 Mapping in ARCGIS

The purpose of this project was to introduce us to mapping using only ARCMAP to produce the maps. This got us away from being reliant on adobe illustrator to make our maps and taught us an easier way to make chloropleth maps and proprotional symbol maps. We had to make two maps (one chloropleth and one proportional symbol map) in ARCMAP using US census data provided to us by the program and the base maps were also produced in ARCMAP . We had to decide what classifaction system to use on our own and what of the census data that we were going to map. for the chloropleth map i chose to map Female population in the united states by county and for the second map I chose to map Population of people aged 18-21.The biggest hurdle in this project was learning how to use the program since we had never used ARCMAP to produce full maps before this point. Once that hurdle was climed and i had knowledge of theprogram making these maps became fun and the only problem after that was balancing visual hierarchy and making sure the maps did not look poor.

exercise 11 Mapping GIS Data

Chloropleth maps of ethnicity desities in New York city

This exercise required us to use only ARCMAP to creat four different maps of one city out of a group of four and create four different cholorpleth maps of that city showing where different ethnicity populations are concentrated. this is one of two maps that we were required to make soley in ARCMAP this made the process a little harder since we had to relearn how to make maps in the program. I chose to make my maps of New York City and map where African American, Asian, Hispanic and Caucasion  populations are concentrated in the area. The data used was obtained from the US Census and the base maps were produced in ARCMAP. The biggest problem i had was figuring out how to rename the data to make it more readable by changing the class break classifacation. With this map it was very fun to finally be able to learn the easy way to make chloropleth maps without using Adobe Illustrator.