13 replies to this topic

[Jimbo]

The client is a Commercial Real Estate Firm located in the Brookside Mall, Fredericton, New Brunswick. The client requested a 7.5'' by 5'' locator map showing the location of the mall within the city of Fredericton. The format is a RGB JPEG image at 300 dpi. Keep in mind this is my first project in over three years.

 Brookside_Mall.jpg   583.13K   153 downloads

[Hans van der Maarel]

 Brookside_Mall.jpg   988.1K   181 downloads

I've cropped the map for you

Some comments:
- Three-digit road numbers don't sit well in the shields. Either make the font size smaller or the shields larger (or consider whether it's really necessary to have road numbers).
- Why are there squares (intersections?) on either side of the Westmoreland Bridge? I know (long live Google Earth...) that there's on/offramps there, but it just looks odd, as I associate them more with the main roads. Then again, the bridge does seem to carry the main route from downtown to the mall, so maybe you want to upgrade that road to a main road.
- The empty space below the scale bar just screams for something to fill it. Maybe a nice title box listing the address of Brookside Mall.
- Are you sure you want to show (rival) King's Place Mall?

Keep up the good work!

[mika]

A few things I'd add / change

1. green parks are quite similar to blues used for waters
2. river lines seem to be quite thick, almost too thick
3. some of the lines don't look smooth. I know that's the digitalisation issue, but perhaps you can smooth them a bit so they look a bit more natural

Apart from that... Good work

Dom

[MapMedia]

Good start.

-I would add exit #s to the exits.
-text casing here and there where text overlaps features
-simplify or draw by hand the streams and roads so they look more sinuous
-The mall icon looks like two red overlapping dots. ?

Keep us posted!

[Dennis McClendon]

I mean in no sense to be personally mean to you, Hasdrubal, but I think this is an excellent illustration of what concerns me about cartography today: it has become a subtractive enterprise in which mapmakers start with an overly complex database and take stuff away until they can stand to look at it. The evidence is in the unthinned hydrology and the jerky, kinky streets. What I suspect the client wanted here was something showing the location of their mall in relation to the major traffic arterials, central Fredericton, and the river. Do shoppers going to the mall need every cul-de-sac? Are they coming by kayak so that the small creeks are relevant? For a map like this, I would recommend a much-simplified approach, in which you put in only the elements you think important, and use a small amount of cartographic license:

[Derek Tonn]

I always think the type of project that you have described:

The client requested a 7.5'' by 5'' locator map showing the location of the mall within the city of Fredericton.

...is a golden opportunity to simplify things (as Dennis has said) while also including some type of simplified inset map that EITHER:

- shows where that area of Fredericton is in a larger context. What towns are nearby? Any other landmarks or major freeways in the nearby vicinity (but outside the main map area)? Any "extra" clues you can provide as to the location of that mall property would be very, very useful to potential customers who might need to drive a longer distance. OR

- shows much more detail of the area immediately around the mall property. Maybe a 1/4 x 1/4 or 1/2 x 1/2 km area? Something that shows you visually how to navigate from whatever "main" street shows up on the main map to enter the mall parking areas.

As for Dennis' other comments, I have to say that my personal greatest concern related to cartography today is the fact that "art" is often being removed from the equation. People are using existing data sets and stripping/dumbing them down, as Dennis has referred to. However, people ALSO have forgotten how to actually DRAW a map in many cases such as this. A cartographer, in my mind, is not someone who simply pulls a data set, strips out data, futzes with the position of type, runs things through ColorBrewer and TypeBrewer and calls it a project. No....a cartographer is as much "artist" as they are "information," or at least they should be. Instead of running to one's GIS data sets, it would be really refreshing if people would instead sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank on-screen canvas and draw. REALLY draw! That "disappearing artform" is what concerns me about map design in 2007, a sort of "cousin" to the concerns that Dennis has referred to as well.

[Charles Syrett]

As for Dennis' other comments, I have to say that my personal greatest concern related to cartography today is the fact that "art" is often being removed from the equation. People are using existing data sets and stripping/dumbing them down, as Dennis has referred to. However, people ALSO have forgotten how to actually DRAW a map in many cases such as this. A cartographer, in my mind, is not someone who simply pulls a data set, strips out data, futzes with the position of type, runs things through ColorBrewer and TypeBrewer and calls it a project. No....a cartographer is as much "artist" as they are "information," or at least they should be. Instead of running to one's GIS data sets, it would be really refreshing if people would instead sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank on-screen canvas and draw. REALLY draw! That "disappearing artform" is what concerns me about map design in 2007, a sort of "cousin" to the concerns that Dennis has referred to as well.

I should come clean here: "Hasdrubal" (James Hines) did this map at my request, because he is looking to start freelancing and I wanted him to do a sample project. I gave him a spec that is typical of the kind of request that my company gets quite frequently, and I wanted to see how he would approach it.

I didn't expect James to post it, but I'm glad he did, because it's always useful to get feedback from more than one source.

I actually think James did quite well, considering the "subtractive" approach that is clearly being taught in the schools these days. Derek and Dennis -- I agree 100 percent with your point of view about methodologies. Not only does the "subtractive" approach often result in unsightly maps, it's often the least efficient and least cost-effective way of doing a project. The small illustration map that James did is the kind of project that we sometimes are asked to complete in a few hours, and drawing is simply the only option.

On the other hand, the data approach is often the way to go in other kinds of projects. The trick is to know when to use which approach.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[Adam Wilbert]

i'm not a metric system expert, but I believe a kilometer is shorter than a mile.

(thats the kind of thing that I would normally only be able to see after getting a press proof back... oops!)

[Jimbo]

i'm not a metric system expert, but I believe a kilometer is shorter than a mile.

(thats the kind of thing that I would normally only be able to see after getting a press proof back... oops!)

1 kilometres = 0.6 miles
Consider this in Nova Scotia most Arterial Highways have a maximum speed of 100 kilometres per hour, so if you drove that speed using your logic you would be travelling 160 miles per hour. Most Arterial Highways are single laned highways, driving 160 miles per hour is an accident waiting to happen.

Second of all I would like to thankyou for all of your comments, your suggestions are all useful. As for the comments about the subtractive method Dennis is quite correct, even through the Cartography program at COGS they don't teach us shading techniques for DEM's; we learn simple production methodolgies.

[Adam Wilbert]

...i miss worded it... let me try again!

1 km is less than 1 mi. So on your scale bar, if the two bars were the same length, the top would be labeled 2 km and the bottom would be labled 1.2427 mi. You have the bottom bar as being shorter, and have it labled as more.

or maybe I'm just having a brain-fart day.

-Adam

[Paul H]

I'm not trying to be mean or picky, but after seeing the inverted scale bar I decided to look over the map very quickly. Here are some things you may also want to check out:

Is it Careleton Park or Carleton Park?
Princess Margeret Bridge or Princess Margaret Bridge?
Atlantic Business Business Ltd. or Atlantic Business Ltd.?

[Paul H]

. . . one more . . .
Caterbury Dr. or Canterbury Dr.?

These are just names that pop out as being potentially incorrect.
You may want to review the spellings on your map.

[Paul H]

. . . Camen or Carmen?

OK, I'll stop.

[Hans van der Maarel]

I've split off the whole subtractive/additive discussion to a new thread.