M3: Cartographic Design

Cartographic Design

Module 3 had us exploring Cartographic Design through Gestalt's Principles.

The labs objective was to create a map of the schools in Ward 7 of Washington D.C that included boundary, transportation and environment layers, and 7 of the neighborhoods in the Ward using Gestalt's Principles. 

Washington D.C. Ward 7 Schools

Keeping the thematic of "Schools" in mind I choose a font for the Title and Subtitles that was fun but not Comic Sans and I used Lego studs of different sizes and three primary colors to label the schools. 

I had multiple reasons for choosing the three colors:

• Yellow for the Elementary schools 
• Largest group needed to be bright but not overwhelming
• School buses are yellow
• For the American Flag - most hardware on the poles are Gold
• Red for Middle schools
• American Flag has red stripes
• Blue for high schools. 
• American Flag has a blue union
• Not Green, Orange, or Purple
• Green already in use for Parks
• Orange and Purple were not standing out enough

I took a page from John Innes – I changed the view of the map from absolute north to north east. I centered the middle of the river on the page. I used a dark outline on the Ward for weight and so it would stand out.  

I placed the 3 other “heavy” elements on the left side of the map. To avoid top-heaviness the simple Legend was placed at the top and the school table was centered just below it to give it a drop down feel. The inset map was placed at the bottom left corner opposite of the major cluster of schools in the top right for balance. 

In the Inset Map I rotated the map back to north and highlighted the Ward 7 in a light purple and then made the indicator a dashed purple. For location orientation I place a small north arrow in the inset map and put a White House icon where the White House and a majority of other National attractions are. I labeled where Virginia and Maryland are and then placed another label for Maryland in the right border of the main map for extra location clarification. I left the major roads in gray on the inset map because without them Washington DC was feeling like a rural area- which it is not by any stretch of the imagination. 

I used ArcPro 3.2.2. The geoprocessing tools I used were Clip, Dissolve, Select and Spatial Join for the roads, and Create Feature Class for the White House.

I know you're shocked it wasn't The West Wing cause of D.C. 

And because the theme of the map is School here's a gif of Barbra Howard from the TV Show Abbot Elementary who I believe is an accurate representation of all the influential educators I've had in my life. I would not be where I am without their continued love and support. My Kindergarten Teacher is always my biggest fan on social media but quite a few of my other primary, secondary, and post-secondary teachers are usually right there with her. I do my best to make them proud and show them their efforts were not wasted.