4 replies to this topic

[cepperson]

Hello! I'm new to this forum, but thought I'd post one of my maps I'm working on for feedback.
I'm making a map for the kittery land trust to use on their website and also as a printed poster or handout.
Main objective is to show the KLT's conserved lands in relation to other notable conserved lands in Kittery. They wanted to show topography and water features (such as the wetlands).

I'm using ArcGIS 9.2 and I have Spatial Analyst (which I used to create the hillshade) and 3-D Analyst (but I don't know a thing about 3-D yet). Still new to S. Analyst. I've recently learned how to create masks which I used to bring out the town of Kittery from the rest of the area.

Unfortunately, because of the mask, the interstate and other roads disappear under the water, because otherwise part of the Piscataqua River would be a different shade of blue if I changed the order of things.

Any suggestions for better fonts throughout?

Any other suggestions welcome as well!

Thx!
Christina
 Kittery.pdf   659.85K   192 downloads

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hi Christina,

I took a look at the PDF and immediately noticed that there's several cases of odd characters running through the texts. You can clearly see this in the legend, but it's also happening in the map itself (e.g. the road name to the right of #2). This may or may not be a font thing, but it's definately something you need to check.

Other than that, I think it looks pretty good, but I have some minor comments:

• "Rachel Carson NWR" might as well be placed horizontally
• Maybe a lighter color for the roads, the black makes them stand out a lot
• Perhaps a halo around the texts
• The hillshade is a bit muted, you could make it a bit more prominent
• It may just be the PDF output settings, but the hillshade and contour lines appear really lo-res and blocky
• Bit of confusion... The title mentions York county (on a side note, you may want to fully incorporate this in the title), so logically I'm assuming that the area of interest is in fact York county. However... the text "York" along the top right boundary implies that the neighbouring county is York...

Hope this helps.

[MapMedia]

Very nice looking map you have there! (and welcome)
I especially like the color choices and map frame.

In terms of final revisions, I agree with Hans' comments and will include:

-Make Elloit & York labels horiz. and add Kittery
-Maybe include only Hwys and major roads (lighter, Hwys with casings, diminish Hwy ramps)
-Contours - they are there, but no labels and not spot height labels. What do you want to say with the contours?
Do KLT land represent unique parts of the terrain (hills etc.), then show this by overlaying contours on parcels
or adding transparency to parcels.
-Fonts - check out Cartotalk discussion on fonts. For a map of this size/complexity you will be fine IMHO with a good
sans and sans-serif fonts. Use serif for water features and sans-serif for terrain (roads=normal, towns=italic,
placenames (refuge, island)=bold/italic as an example).
-Re: mask for Kittery - at first I was thinking this was a boundary of a preserve. Because you don't have anything
going on outside of Kittery, other than Hwys and town names, you could do away with mask and keep it all one color
and simply add dashed city boundaries.
-Preserve markers - some of them cover-up a substantial portion of the preserve, so I can't really see the dimensions
and its full context in the region (maybe this should be the map focus), so I would look at label options. One might be
lolly-pops (filled circle with leader line). And possibly use preserve lime-green color for the number color, on black circle.
- Oh, and I think I am seeing a stray "1" on Hwy 1, near the Wilson Rd intersection.

Again, this is a very decent map. Thanks for sharing and plz keep us posted on final version.

Chris

[Hans van der Maarel]

That would be this thread on fonts.

[cepperson]

Thanks for the great input! I've already learned so much just about fonts that I never knew before. I was able to download Microsoft Reader that comes with the Frutiger Linotype font (for free) and that really makes a difference for readability of text on the map.