16 replies to this topic

[BEAVER]

Here is map I made of the Beaverkill river in NY for fly fishing industry. Some of the flyfishing info was removed to show this map.

[Martin Gamache]

Beaver,

I've moved this to a new thread.

It is going to be difficult for us to evaluate your symbology if you strip the main information content (i.e. fishing spots) from the map. Better to post an additional small subset of one spot so we can see how you symbolize these things, as well as a legend. As it is now it just looks like a road map with a really colorful elevation tinted shaded relief background. We are all professionals here so I dont thinkl you have to worry aboout your content getting stolen. We can also remove you map once the feedback has been posted....

At first glance I would suggest removing the contour lines as I dont see them adding any valuable info to a fisherman....but perhaps I am wrong. I would also use a slightly less bright palette for your hypsometric tints (elevation colors). That wide range of colors just adds noise to the map as is. Make it more subtle. The main focus of your map is the hydrology network...lakes, rivers, rapids, streams. Draw attention to those things, that is what I presume your audience is looking at. Dont use red labels to identify the elevations of peaks...I dout that is where you will be fishing from. Save the red labels for GPS coordinates of those secret fishing spots you want to share with your clients...thats why they will want to buy the map in the first place, not to know the heights of the local hills.

The blue road exit labels are hard to read when they are placed on top of the roads. You may want to try moving them and/or adding a white halo to them to help the legibility.

This is a good start, but post something we can really give you feedback on.

mg

[BEAVER]

Sorry about the large image. I changed it to thumbnail. Here is the map section with all the info I have so far. The background colors look rally sharp on the screen but once I print it on my Epson 2200/7600 it doesn't look so overwhelming. I actually changed it because it looked to gray on paper. The elevation lined are really important since 30% of fishermen will hike up hill to fish all the brooks that run into the main river. I would like to add elevation numbers but don't know how. I use MicroDEM, 3Dem, Global Mapper and none of those produce good elevation numbers that you see on topo maps. The maps that are currently available of that area are hand drawn and copied thousand time in black and white, so anything I make looks awesome to them. I will have to do a lot more changes before I can call this map a finished product. I will definitely change the exits. The peak numbers that look red are actually dark brown on paper, but that's again my be the problem with calibrating the printer. The parking symbols represent the numbers of cars. This is a tiny section of the actual map. The map is 15000x28000 pixels and will be printed on 120” x 65” paper. This is a wall map. I'm attaching picture of my previous map on the wall of my bedroom so that you can see the size of those maps. There are no maps like this available on the market and I hope to make at least 12 of them in the next two years. Adirondacks is my next project. Thanks for the tips, I can use all the help I can get.

[Martin Gamache]

Chris,

If the elevation lines are important I suggest you stratify your line weights to add an index contour and that you label it. Also make sure you specify the contour interval somewhere. As is, those lines don't impart much information. The other aspect is that they are being interpolated from the DEM it looks like. Depending on your map scale, those contours may not be very good for any ground navigation. It would be much better to obtain the DLG's and use the original contours from the USGS quads. But that really depends on the scale of your final map.


As for your map size....that sounds really large.

[BEAVER]

That's my problem. I don't know how to add contour labels in the software I have. Global Mapper and MicroDem has lables but they look really bad. DLGs are too fine to put it on this map with this scale. The map represents 90 miles x 50 miles area.

Chris,

If the elevation lines are important I suggest you stratify your line weights to add an index contour and that you label it. Also make sure you specify the contour interval somewhere. As is, those lines don't impart much information.  The other aspect is that they are being interpolated from the DEM it looks like. Depending on your map scale, those contours may not be very good for any ground navigation. It would be much better to obtain the DLG's and use the original contours from the USGS quads. But that really depends on the scale of your final map.


As for your map size....that sounds really large.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Martin Gamache]

Chris,

If you have never done so I suggest taking a look at Pat Dunlavey's beautifully crafted topo maps PD Carto. They are easy to obtain and well worth studying as models for New England. I think Pat is currently working on some NJ/NY AT maps, that may also be good models for your own work. The shading is subtle but very legible and useful to map interpretation, same with the contour lines. The color palette is appropriate for the new england landscape. Great attention has been paid to labelling features at an appropriate level of detail for the map scale. I highly recommend getting a couple of his maps and studying them, there is not much I could tell you here that you could not learn better from spending a couple of hour studying the BNRC map series.

As for labelling. Typography is probably the most telling sign of a well crafted map and the easiest way to tell how much time someone spent developping a product. That often means hand placing labels. On topo maps it is the single most time consuming element. The labels created automatically by most software apps. are just your starting point.

As for the DLG, you don't mention what your actual map scale is, but there are ways to select every second or fifth line in the DLGs and to use just those lines, while still keeping a decent contour interval (100ft for example) and having your labelled index contour every 500 ft. This is really scale dependent though.

Your parking symbology is interesting. The two squares approach is a bit redundant. I would suggest one symbol that incoporates the number but that doesnt have you repeating a boxed P everytime. Something like this:

 Untitled_1.gif   5.69K   126 downloads

The lozenge symbolizes parking and the number indicates the number of spaces. You can use different colors to symbolize the type of parking i.e. parking lot vs, pullouts, vs. private property....


mg

[DaveB]

Very good comments from Martin so far.

The wider river is easy to see, but the smaller streams with the lighter blue tend to fade back more. If those smaller streams are important for the audience it might be better to use the same blue you used for the river outline, for the linework and for the stream labels.
Just below the highway shield for 86 there is a round-cornered white box with the number 17. Is that another parking spot? Or does it indicate something else? If it's a parking spot why is it different from the other parking labels? If it's something else why is it so similar to the parking spot label/symbol?

The map is huge. 10 feet by nearly 5 and a half feet! I'm guessing fishermen don't take it out into the field... So how do they use it? Do they make notes at home from the map on the wall? Is it more for display than practical use?

I think it's a very nice start.

[Matthew Hampton]

The lozenge symbolizes parking...

Not to mention that it makes people want to lick your maps. Always a good design consideration...

[Matthew Hampton]

I grew up fly fishing the Rocky Mtn west, trying to pull out big German Brown trout on willow choked streams (little fiesty brookies, too). I think it would be worthwhile for a fly fishing map to include some vegetation types. At least one perhaps, showing where canopy cover and/or shrubs may be.

The MRLC's National Land Cover Data is freely available and might add a little more texture and soften the bright hyspometric tint (after simplifying to 1 or 2 classifications). Something like the USGS topo "green" (derived to show where you can hide a platoon) would work too.

[BEAVER]

Thanks guys for the tips. I will play around with the parking symbols. The symbol that is next to the 86 shield is for the road. Currently this road in 2 lane highway 17 but within next year it will turn into 3 lane Interstate 86. That's why I have two symbols on the road.

I don't know about the land cover since I want this map to have color coded elevation. Something like you see on Raven Maps. The map was going to be large but turn out to be very expensive. I'm shrinking it to 40” x 60”. This is a wall map. The folded map will be 40” x 30” printed on both sides using UV inks on synthetic waterproof sheet. I will post the entire maps background later.

[BEAVER]

Here is the entire map. This is just the background with some rivers thrown in. The red rectangular shows the detailed area that I posted before. I'm still not sure about the colors.

[BEAVER]

I have two Pat Dunlavey's paper maps and all his PDF maps that are available at MAPulisher award web site. I'm just not too impressed with his choice of colors on his maps. The paper maps are really hard to read (could be the offset printing) but everything just looks gray and in the same color. Specially the South Taconic Range paper map. The maps look great at his Portfolio page where they are re sampled and in the process look smoother. But that's a matter of taste. Tom Patterson maps are much nicer and cleaner. Specially the Kenai Fjords map. Work of art.

http://www.shadedrel...alism/kenai.jpg

Chris,

If you have never done so I suggest taking a look at Pat Dunlavey's beautifully crafted topo maps PD Carto.  They are easy to obtain and well worth studying as models for New England. I think Pat is currently working on some NJ/NY AT maps, that may also be good models for your own work. The shading is subtle  but very legible and useful to map interpretation, same with the contour lines.  The color palette is appropriate for the new england landscape.  Great attention has been paid to labelling features at an appropriate level of detail for the map scale. I highly recommend getting a couple of his maps and studying them, there is not much I could tell you here that you could not learn better from spending a couple of hour studying the BNRC map series.

As for labelling. Typography is probably the most telling sign of a well crafted map and the easiest way to tell how much time someone spent developping  a product. That often means hand placing labels. On topo maps it is the single most time consuming element. The labels created automatically by most software apps.  are just your starting point.

As for the DLG, you don't mention what your actual map scale is, but there are ways to select every second or fifth line in the DLGs and to use just those lines, while still keeping a decent contour interval (100ft for example) and having your labelled index contour every 500 ft.  This is really scale dependent though.

Your parking symbology is interesting. The two squares approach is a bit redundant. I would suggest one symbol that incoporates the number but that doesnt have you repeating a boxed P everytime.  Something like this:

 Untitled_1.gif   5.69K   126 downloads

The lozenge symbolizes parking and the number indicates the number of spaces. You can use different colors to symbolize the type of parking i.e.  parking lot vs, pullouts, vs. private property....


mg

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Matthew Hampton]

Specially the Kenai Fjords map. Work of art

That was what I was getting at by including vegetation in addition to elevation tinting...

I like Pat's maps (Pat too). He is a real pro.

[Martin Gamache]

Tom Patterson maps are much nicer and cleaner. Specially the Kenai Fjords map. Work of art.

Chris,

I agree that TP's work is very artistic and beautiful but unfortunately your seem to be comparing apples to oranges. Both these maps are great but they serve totally different purposes and audiences and are compiled at much different scales. It is also difficult to compare the Coastal Alaskan landscape to the Catskills. Even if you choose to use a natural land color derived color palette as suggested by matthew (which I think would be the ideal solution) your map will look very different because of the landcover differences. Tom is often able to use more saturated colors because he does not need to overlay alot of linework on his backgrounds. Once you start adding more information on top you need to tone down the background to maintain legibility. IMO the worst thing you could do is keep the canned hypso tints that come with your software.

[BEAVER]

What's canned hypso tints?