7 replies to this topic

[KevinC]

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum. I've been in working in geospatial analysis for years. Now I'm just looking to improve my cartography skills. We all know scientist make the worst maps right? Lol

This is a Phase II archaeological survey map for the company I work for www.tvaresearch.com. This map is formatted to be put into a InDesign Document that will have 1" margins.

 TVAR_1240_1MA391_PhaseII_Trenches_New.jpg   326.59K   107 downloads

Thanks for your time,
Kevin

[frax]

Looks pretty functional to me - depending on it's use of course. Is this map intended to be used in the field, or together with field collected data/information/material?

How will it be reproduced?

[David Medeiros]

This map looks like it would work for archeologists or surveyors (assuming this is intended for 'expert' users, not general public).

The only thing that is a little off putting are the contour labels, they would look better inline with the contour:



It's also probably better to label the units after the last number in the scale rather than after the zero. The contour interval legend should not appear to be a contour label itself, makes it harder to find. Maybe place near the credits or the N arrow. Or under the scale.

[R. Gosselin]

Hello Kevin,

It will be maybe better to separate map and photo.

For example, you could present a smaller picture (photo) of the environment with just a red point to indicate the location of the archaeological site, and present technical informations (trenchs, level, etc) in a map, greater than the photo.

Just a suggestion...

Regards,

renaud

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum. I've been in working in geospatial analysis for years. Now I'm just looking to improve my cartography skills. We all know scientist make the worst maps right? Lol

This is a Phase II archaeological survey map for the company I work for www.tvaresearch.com. This map is formatted to be put into a InDesign Document that will have 1" margins.

 TVAR_1240_1MA391_PhaseII_Trenches_New.jpg   326.59K   107 downloads

Thanks for your time,
Kevin

[Dennis McClendon]

One thing that puzzles me is distances in meters but elevations in feet.

[KevinC]

Thanks for the very insightful feedback everyone!

@frax This is final map for the technical report. All of the field work is complete.

@DavidMedeiros The primary audience for the map will be the state archaeologist. The client
will also look at it but they tend to be a non-technical audience. Thanks for pointing out the countours
, I have been lazy about just letting ArcMap place the contour labels. Arcmap is terrible at
placing them in a logical manner, I will have to do some more deep editing in Illustrator.

@RGosselin I'm not quite sure what you mean. I used a aerial photo to communicate the land use
and contours to communicate the topology. These are very neccesary context for understanding
archaeological survey and features. There will be very large scale (~1:100) maps of each feature
that will be traced in Illustrator from scanned hand maps.

@DennisMcClendon Great point! I never thought of that. I alway try to use metric whenever possible
but they contour lines I recived from Huntsville are in feet. I suppose I could generate a DEM from
those lines and the generate metric contours from that. But I think I will change the direction
units to feet as well! Thanks

Another thing I figured out since I made this post was how to propperly cite Google Earth imagery.
I did a print screen and georeference to get that background.

At the bottom of Google Earth shows the Attribution. It is usually something like:
(copyright sign) Google 2012

Sometimes it might have imagery from GeoEye or Landsat as well

I will re-post the map with corrections later.

Thanks again,
Kevin

[frax]

Kevin,

Here are the guidelines for citing/permissions for Google Earth

[pghardy]

Thanks for pointing out the countours, I have been lazy about just letting ArcMap place the contour labels. Arcmap is terrible at placing them in a logical manner, I will have to do some more deep editing in Illustrator.

Have you turned on the Maplex label engine in ArcMap, and selected its contour labelling mode? Maplex is free and included with all licence levels of ArcGIS desktop these days. It generally does a good enough job of placing labels not to need manual post-editing in most cases, and even knows about doing the 'contour ladders' like in David's example. It can save a *lot* of Illustrator manual work.