Module 3 Cartographic Design

In this weeks lab we learned how to break into cartography in a more cleaned up manner by following Gestalt's Principles. Including contrast, visual hierarchy, balance, etc. following all of these principle's allows us to create a much more aesthetically pleasing map. Maps are meant to be simple yet effective at delivering information. Having too much going on makes it hard to get easy information off of it which makes the map pretty ineffective. While having a properly balanced map will let a person easily obtain all of the needed information while also not drawing much attention away from the main map. This week I was able to learn how to properly establish boundaries for all of the legends and other needed map elements. Unfortunately I wasn't able to use Adobe to clean up the map anymore than I did in ArcGIS Pro but the map itself still turned out pretty good. Other than that I learned quite a lot about the different applications of visual properties when concerning maps and the whole philosophy behind the subject. This week completely helped me wrap up my skills on properly developing a clean and effectively reading map.