31 replies to this topic

[David25]

Hi all,

I've done this map of New Mexico just for fun and a 'general use' map. What an effort it took! Alot of the data had to be modified and managed etc before I could even start. What I'm looking for is feedback on symbology, labelling styles and colours etc. I'm pretty pleased with it as it is but there's always room for improvement, so please, be as critical as you want.

The audience is me......this is only going to hang in my cubicle at work but it's something I want to be proud of. It was created entirely in ArcMap 9.3 with a 30m DEM.

Finally, this data is good enough to use based on what I downloaded and using search engine results of NM maps to verify, but if someone knowledgeable of the area can point out that I've missed something major, please do (a query by Area has been put on for cities, so if a small place is significant for some reason, please let me know).

Also, I do know that the three leaders around Los Alamos are at the wrong angles, but it's an issue with the export - it's taken me a couple of days and many exports of figuring how to get this up on site as cartotalk's limit stopped it from working here so I wasn't about to go back and fix it now!!!

Thanks!

http://sharesend.com/danm2


David

[Jimbo]

You definitely have a lot of text placement problems particularly in crowded area's of the map. I think a lot of cartographers will point that out as well, but I'm not going into specifics since it will take too long to list all of the problems. I will guess that your not used to using ArcMap. Also on the state highways you could try to re-create the state highway symbols instead of those ugly circles, it can be done just read the help topics.

[Robert2009]

Hasdrubal,

I am from Southern New Mexico and if you would like to have me review the map I can take a look but my work won't allow me to open the link. I would be happy to provide you some feedback.

You can send me an email either robert.pollock@nm.usda.gov

or you can sent it to pdf file and I should be able to open it from here.

If you have an account to GIS stack exchange website I am there so you can post it to me if you want.

Up to you, my friend.

Robert

[Gretchen Peterson]

If you want to make it a great map you'll have to change all the text to annotation and individually place and modify each bit. On some of those natural feature labels like national parks you can change the leading (you can use negative numbers) so as to squeeze it a bit. You'd also want to lower the label size. I was getting a bit of vertigo scrolling around the map and I assume that it is at 100% so you'd have plenty of room to lower the point sizes and maintain readability. Sometimes I peek at Google maps or Bing maps to see how they've labeled a particular location in terms of the haloing and placement.

The road systems may be able to look better as well but I had a hard time figuring out what could be done without being able to see the whole map at a glance. Also, for the locator map, if you're going to use a leader line for the "New Mexico" label I would make it point to the center of the map.

I could maybe make more suggestions if I could see the whole thing at a glance.

[Jimbo]

Hasdrubal,

I am from Southern New Mexico and if you would like to have me review the map I can take a look but my work won't allow me to open the link. I would be happy to provide you some feedback.

You can send me an email either robert.pollock@nm.usda.gov

or you can sent it to pdf file and I should be able to open it from here.

If you have an account to GIS stack exchange website I am there so you can post it to me if you want.

Up to you, my friend.

Robert

Thanks Rob for the offer but the map is not mine. See the name of the original posters name "David25." That's okay mistakes do happen.

I was able to open the link so it surprises me that you can not however if you want a PDF I could send it to you with David25's permission since I downloaded it but I would need his e-mail, (so that you could contact him).

[David25]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies.

Indeed, I use ArcMap at work but never have the freedom to labels things how I want. I had thought I'd done an alright job of placing labels off of urban areas etc, and that natural areas didn't look too bad. Clearly I was wrong!!

You have my permission to send the PDF to Robert, I had a nightmare of time getting it to a site as it is. My email is david_rugby16@yahoo.co.uk

Please, be critical if you want, I obviously need to learn more!

[Robert2009]

I apologized and I must have reading the wrong person's name. When someone post or reply, their name appears at the top left corner rather than at the bottom left corner....so that' why I took Hasdrubal's instead of David25. Sorry about that.


I will be more carefully the next time. Thanks.

[Jimbo]

Here's the link to his PDF with David's permission. It may take a few minutes to load.

http://annexmaps.com.../New_Mexico.pdf

[Laura Miles]

I noticed some of the greens for your parks/wildlife refuges etc. look different in the legend than they do on the map, I think you've used a transparency that's mixing with the hillshade underneath. You can use the eyedropper tool in ArcMap to grab the rgb values from the map and then use them in the legend patches so they match exactly. Also cities in the map have a black border but the legend patch has a light coloured (grey?) border.
Laura

[David25]

I noticed some of the greens for your parks/wildlife refuges etc. look different in the legend than they do on the map, I think you've used a transparency that's mixing with the hillshade underneath. You can use the eyedropper tool in ArcMap to grab the rgb values from the map and then use them in the legend patches so they match exactly. Also cities in the map have a black border but the legend patch has a light coloured (grey?) border.
Laura

Thanks! I'll look into that tonight.

Do other people agree that the labelling is out of crazy???

Thanks to people who have replied.

[David25]

Thanks! I'll look into that tonight.

Do other people agree that the labelling is out of crazy???

Thanks to people who have replied.
[/quote]

I went to say out of control then my brain did a switch......

[Hans van der Maarel]

The labelling definitely could use some manual input. It's often the most time-consuming part of producing a map, but it's also the part that can really make your map stand out. Automatic labelling, be it Maplex, Label Pro or Label-EZ, is great technology but imho it still can't beat the human touch on complex maps (it can help you save a lot of time though)

[David25]

The labelling definitely could use some manual input. It's often the most time-consuming part of producing a map, but it's also the part that can really make your map stand out. Automatic labelling, be it Maplex, Label Pro or Label-EZ, is great technology but imho it still can't beat the human touch on complex maps (it can help you save a lot of time though)

Hi,

Hmm....I did in fact go to annotation on all labels!! I suppose I'm just not aware of where labels should be - I tried to keep city labels off the polygon but close to it, the natural areas in the centre of the polygon where possible, Ind. Resv. labels were hardest.......rivers I thought I did a good job, and roads too (albeit the symbology could need changing).

If anyone has any other tips......

What do people think in general? Good map and content, placings etc apart from labelling? Or is this one for the scrap heap??

Thanks

[Robert2009]

Good moring,

Yesterday I was able to get a copy of David's map and it was huge file size. Okay I reviewed it and found some of the things I have made comments. I saved the file to a different name and reduce the size to 4 MB . The problem is the Cartotalk would not allow me to upload the file for David to review it.

What I did was putting the sticky notes to make some suggest for David to review it. It is up to him to decide. He does not have to agree with me. Though the map is really nice and I agree with everyone the labels are hard to read. I hope you can get the chance to read my suggest map I saved the file.

I sent the file to Anthony his email who can try and post it here. Thanks.

[Jimbo]

The labelling definitely could use some manual input. It's often the most time-consuming part of producing a map, but it's also the part that can really make your map stand out. Automatic labelling, be it Maplex, Label Pro or Label-EZ, is great technology but imho it still can't beat the human touch on complex maps (it can help you save a lot of time though)

Hi,

Hmm....I did in fact go to annotation on all labels!! I suppose I'm just not aware of where labels should be - I tried to keep city labels off the polygon but close to it, the natural areas in the centre of the polygon where possible, Ind. Resv. labels were hardest.......rivers I thought I did a good job, and roads too (albeit the symbology could need changing).

If anyone has any other tips......

What do people think in general? Good map and content, placings etc apart from labelling? Or is this one for the scrap heap??

Thanks

A question for David:

Have you ever used the style manager in ArcMap?
Have you used the label tool?
Have you used annotation from a geodatabase?