31 replies to this topic

[Jimbo]

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

To clear that up that's my middle name. I changed it from James to Anthony almost two years ago due to a lost romantic opportunity that never happened because of my own stupidity. I'm for the most part over that so I'll change it back to my first name "James" to avoid confusion.

I should have the file/s up by tomorrow.

[David25]

[/quote]

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?
[/quote]

Annotation is from a geodatabase, yes. Style manager, sometimes. I know how to place labels, change thier properties etc, just obviously not how to place them in propoer locations. Can someone tell me where I'm going so wrong? Should I use more leader lines? Should cities have thier labels covering the boundary of their polygon?

[Dennis McClendon]

As a design, I think it would be improved by not using outlines on any of the polygons. The color difference should be adequate. Exception: I often like to use only a double-outline, as you’ve done, for Indian reservations and National Forests. This helps keep the color fill from dominating large-scale maps, and helps reflect the fact that there may be private land inholdings within a generalized reservation or NF boundary.

To me, state parks—being smaller and more inviolate—should be more intensive green than the more permeable national forests. The national forest green should be more transparent, so topography shows through.

It’s safe to have your city polygons removed from national forest polygons. Developed land has always been removed from NF holdings, and it’s rare to have municipal boundaries that include NF lands. Los Alamos and Ruidoso are examples of this problem.

The "King snake" continental divide line is not to my taste; I would use a simple line of gray dots.

The state highway shield is close enough to the New Mexico “Zia” that it doesn’t bother me to use the circles. What does bother me is putting US inside the shield that already, by its shape, indicated US highways. US66 has been gone since 1985, alas.

The positioning of labels and leaders could indeed be more felicitous. The rivers would be nicer if tapered from source to mouth.

As a map, there are some details to look at: the spelling of Rio de los Pinos, Cimarron River, Española, Doña Ana, “Fort Wingate Depot Activity,” Rio Puerco, Cañoncito, duplicate Holloman AFBs, White Sands National Monument. Does the Santa Fe River not flow into the Rio Grande?

You show spurious “towns” like all the ones on Navajo land in northeast Arizona, Huerfano, Taos Pueblo, Brimhall Nizhoni, Twin Lakes, Nageezi, Pueblo Pintado, Thoreau, Encinal, Mesita, Cedar Grove, Glorieta, Lake Sumner, Los Chaves—but don’t show really important places like Taos itself, Bloomfield, Chama, Milan, and Belén.

As a data set, I'm curious what source you used for the Indian reservations and other landholdings. Just this week I was mapping the Jicarilla Apache reservation area and that ranch east of Chama only became part of the res year before last.

[David Medeiros]

Can someone tell me where I'm going so wrong? Should I use more leader lines? Should cities have thier labels covering the boundary of their polygon?

Definitely don't add leader lines if you can avoid it. The goal is almost always to make the connection between label and feature obvious and intuitive (which is not always easy to do). From a quick scan of your map it looks to me like you may have a few too many styles and fonts in use. It's best to stick with one or two type faces and use styling to separate each into various feature styles. use ALL CAPS, Title Case, color, saturation, font size, l e t t e r s p a c i n g, BOLD, italics etc. to create the styles you need from a single type face. Try to use sans serif for most labeling, serif usually only for water, maybe some other natural features. Personally I think you have too much serif on the map already. I tend to use italic sans serif for some of the features you have as serif like mountain peaks and some of the parks.

I think there are two main changes that will make a big difference for your map labeling: 1) simplify your label styles as mentioned above, re size and move labels around manually to get a better fit. 2) make some color and line weight changes to the map to subdue the map background a bit. Use thinner river lines, more natural colors, less saturated colors overall, lighter relief shading image. This will allow the labels to sit on top of the map in the visual hierarchy and make reading them much easier. It will also allow you to use smaller labels and labels that are not full black in some places.

For some basics on map labeling here's a good resource from Eduard Imhof:
http://www.lojic.org...mes_on_Maps.pdf

See also, Type Brewer:
http://www.typebrewer.org/

[Esther Mandeno]

Annotation is from a geodatabase, yes. Style manager, sometimes. I know how to place labels, change thier properties etc, just obviously not how to place them in propoer locations. Can someone tell me where I'm going so wrong? Should I use more leader lines? Should cities have thier labels covering the boundary of their polygon?

It's the little things that count.

Here's one spot to improve: The Huron Lake/El Vado Reservior/Stinking Lake (love the name) area.
It's just super busy. With the road numbers, lake names, stream names, park name and then area name (Rio Arriba) - all just screaming at the reader, that it's very hard to know what to read/look at first.

The labels are not on top of the features. You have moved them to the side, but not enough. They spill over onto the line work. It doesn't have to be much, but it's like if you can get all the text off of key features. El Vado Reservoir is hard to read placed over the road, and the two park names are all scrunched up. Have you considered maybe using a leader line with one of 'em.

Font choices - I have a real hard time with this because I often just have the standard font sets available to me, but the idea is to find fonts that are easy to read at the scale you intend to print. I would suggest a sans font for most things and a serif font for just a few of the features you want to focus on.

Font color - consider using less font colors and more shades. Can Rio Arriba be a slightly dark gray than the gray background? Can you highway symbol text be the same color as the roads?

Highway symbols - anything is better than those circles. Just try something else. Sometimes it takes me days to find the right symbol, and even then it's still a compromise but it's at least better than those circles.

Well, I'm not sure if that is helpful, but there it is. If I have more time, I'll offer more suggestions. And, remember, it's a style thing. If you like it, then go for it, but keep in mind that others might not. The key is to make it readable. All else is just icing.

[Esther Mandeno]

Can someone tell me where I'm going so wrong? Should I use more leader lines? Should cities have thier labels covering the boundary of their polygon?

Definitely don't add leader lines if you can avoid it. The goal is almost always to make the connection between label and feature obvious and intuitive (which is not always easy to do). From a quick scan of your map it looks to me like you may have a few too many styles and fonts in use. It's best to stick with one or two type faces and use styling to separate each into various feature styles. use ALL CAPS, Title Case, color, saturation, font size, l e t t e r s p a c i n g, BOLD, italics etc. to create the styles you need from a single type face. Try to use sans serif for most labeling, serif usually only for water, maybe some other natural features. Personally I think you have too much serif on the map already. I tend to use italic sans serif for some of the features you have as serif like mountain peaks and some of the parks.

I think there are two main changes that will make a big difference for your map labeling: 1) simplify your label styles as mentioned above, re size and move labels around manually to get a better fit. 2) make some color and line weight changes to the map to subdue the map background a bit. Use thinner river lines, more natural colors, less saturated colors overall, lighter relief shading image. This will allow the labels to sit on top of the map in the visual hierarchy and make reading them much easier. It will also allow you to use smaller labels and labels that are not full black in some places.

For some basics on map labeling here's a good resource from Eduard Imhof:
http://www.lojic.org...mes_on_Maps.pdf

See also, Type Brewer:
http://www.typebrewer.org/

Ah, didn't see this until after I posted...had to leave the computer...anyway, what David just said.

[David25]

Thank to all for the replies. This will give me plenty to work on over the next week or so before I re-post.

Dennis: I used http://rgis.unm.edu/ for virtually everything except I think the roads were from this source and another (I did a fair bit of data cleanup to make them useable).

I'll have a look into those town names I left off......

To all: There's just two fonts here: Gill Sans MT and Garamond.

I will look into the circle symbols some more....didn't realise they are universally hated

[David Medeiros]

To all: There's just two fonts here: Gill Sans MT and Garamond.

I thought that may be the case, but it's hard to tell when looking at a rasterized version of a map. There are a lot of color changes going on between the various feature labels and some inconsistencies between some of the labels that should be the same (ie river and lake labels). The misunderstanding speaks to the need to simplify the map itself as well as the label styles. The more I look at the map lines and styles the more I think that making changes to simplify their representations will improve your type legibility immensely.

This kind of clean up is not easy with tools designed to make it easy (like Illustrator and Mapub), it's even harder in Arc which can be less flexible in terms of basic style setting and label repositioning.

One thing I noticed that may have already been addresses, is the variety of styles for parks and forests. It's a lot of green and though styled very differently they can be hard to figure out on the map without looking back to the legend. it would be a good idea to add some uniformity to this by using a base style for some of these with minor modifications in color or border. You can reduce the number of greens in use by pulling National Parks and National Monuments out of the green category and giving them unique colors.

Other things I might look at would be eliminating some of the fill casings like those around the urban area polygons and indian reservations. If you want to keep the boarders switch from using black on the fill color to doing a single color combo where the border is a solid color and the fill is a less saturated version of the same color. County lines and labels could also be moved to the back by setting labels to gray and using a single line color for the co boundary.

Just keep going back to the map and thinking about what you can simplify or take away all together.

good luck.

[Jimbo]

Couldn't get the file size down but as per request & with his permission I'm adding the PDF with comment tags for David:

But you will have to access my link:
http://annexmaps.com..._co...2 (2).pdf

Within the next week I am going to take both files off my server.

[Dennis McClendon]

New Mexico's state highway marker is a circle, so I wouldn't stray too far.

Just for fun, here's what I did last summer for the middle of the state. I probably used the same public lands dataset, but I think I redrew all the highways, county lines, and water features:

[BioGeoMan]

Thanks for the post...I like to see New Mexico maps on the site.

I live and work in New Mexico (Albuquerque and Santa Fe respectively) and travel throughout the state on a regular basis.

I see some issue with your map...I'll try not to repeat previous comments...

1. Your National Forest layer looks correct, however you are missing all the Wilderness areas in New Mexico. Note that some of the NFs have big holes in them, that is where the Wilderness areas are located.

2. Your Indian Reservation layer is incomplete especially in the McKinley/San Juan county area

3. You didn't label the Valles Caldera National Preserve just NW of Los Alamos

4. Sacramento Mts. are labeled incorrectly, they are further to the southwest

5. Manzano Mtn. State Park is a postage stamp park, you make it look as if the NF is the park...I would use a leader to point to the tiny park

6. I would label the Canadian River where it goes along Mora County as that is where it is most prominent

7. I would at least label the county seat for each county. The layer you are using does not show some important population areas. For example Angel Fire is a tiny town, but Reserve in Catron County is the county seat and larger in population, but it is not shown.

8. The NM State Road symbol is in fact a Zia, not a circle, so if you decide to customize your road symbols, I would use the Zia.

9. Cooke's Peak in Luna County is the most prominent mountain in the area, but you don't label it, instead you are labeling other, non-prominent peaks.

10. Just a thought, but you may want to add BLM and State Trust Lands to the map as they are VERY important when navigating New Mexico both for traveling purposes and political purposes!

11. I've never been a fan of using different colors for rivers, boundaries of lakes, and fill of lakes....try to use one color for all water bodies and nix water boundaries on lakes...

12. Can you use something other than gray for your background? New Mexico is pretty brown, so that may be an option.

13. Overall, I agree with other reviewers that some time has to be spent with placing annotation as spacing is an issue.

Thanks for posting!

[David25]

Thanks for the post...I like to see New Mexico maps on the site.

I live and work in New Mexico (Albuquerque and Santa Fe respectively) and travel throughout the state on a regular basis.

I see some issue with your map...I'll try not to repeat previous comments...

1. Your National Forest layer looks correct, however you are missing all the Wilderness areas in New Mexico. Note that some of the NFs have big holes in them, that is where the Wilderness areas are located.

2. Your Indian Reservation layer is incomplete especially in the McKinley/San Juan county area

3. You didn't label the Valles Caldera National Preserve just NW of Los Alamos

4. Sacramento Mts. are labeled incorrectly, they are further to the southwest

5. Manzano Mtn. State Park is a postage stamp park, you make it look as if the NF is the park...I would use a leader to point to the tiny park

6. I would label the Canadian River where it goes along Mora County as that is where it is most prominent

7. I would at least label the county seat for each county. The layer you are using does not show some important population areas. For example Angel Fire is a tiny town, but Reserve in Catron County is the county seat and larger in population, but it is not shown.

8. The NM State Road symbol is in fact a Zia, not a circle, so if you decide to customize your road symbols, I would use the Zia.

9. Cooke's Peak in Luna County is the most prominent mountain in the area, but you don't label it, instead you are labeling other, non-prominent peaks.

10. Just a thought, but you may want to add BLM and State Trust Lands to the map as they are VERY important when navigating New Mexico both for traveling purposes and political purposes!

11. I've never been a fan of using different colors for rivers, boundaries of lakes, and fill of lakes....try to use one color for all water bodies and nix water boundaries on lakes...

12. Can you use something other than gray for your background? New Mexico is pretty brown, so that may be an option.

13. Overall, I agree with other reviewers that some time has to be spent with placing annotation as spacing is an issue.

Thanks for posting!

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into getting those extra layers added.......

I agree with my towns not showing in places where they should....I did a query by area to show larger towns......forgetting that in America quite often smaller places hold significance!!!

My Arc licence is about to expire on my laptop so it may be a while before this map gets reposted, but it will do at some point.

Thanks again! Nice to get info from a local.

PS: Can someone please explain what is wrong with the label placement, is it that labels are too far from their polygon? Should I use points instead? Should labels be off of the polygon boundary?

Thanks

[Dennis McClendon]

Query by area is not a good way to decide the importance of a municipality. You end up with Indian administrative divisions that cover hundreds of square miles but have only 100 residents.

[David Medeiros]

Regional city prominence can be subjective and I don't think the phenomenon of smaller cities holding more prominence than larger ones is uniquely American. It can be fairly typical for an administratively important city to not be the primary city in its state or province in terms of population or economy.

I usually use population as the primary classification attribute for this and to that make adjustments for state capitols or county seats etc.

[David25]

Regional city prominence can be subjective and I don't think the phenomenon of smaller cities holding more prominence than larger ones is uniquely American. It can be fairly typical for an administratively important city to not be the primary city in its state or province in terms of population or economy.

I usually use population as the primary classification attribute for this and to that make adjustments for state capitols or county seats etc.

True enough. Apologies. I'm from England and it's usually only the places of considerable size that are important. I always found it fascinating that most American state capitals are small places