Monday, February 05, 2007
For Lab 1 I chose to map the percentage of people who work at home vice those who work outside of the home. I found it interesting that most of the states are pretty equal in these percentages. I expected that more people would be working outside of their homes. In fact the numbers were so close that I was able to use the same classification scheme for both maps. They are classified by equal area based on range.
I was concerned about continuity in the maps. The first two are exactly the same. But I found the font for the numbers was too large and busy for the final map. Rather than switch the fonts in the first two maps, I left them because I found the overall effect of the font on the maps pleasing and I don't think it is too much of a challenge to read. I chose this font, even though it is a little "curly-que" because my concept of the map was of something whimsical. Probably because intially I was thinking of those who work at home; I think that working at home gives people the opportunity to express themselves in a way that is not always available to the work-a-day world. The final map is more complex, particularly the legend. So I changed the font of the numbers to increase simplicity and it allowed me to reduce the size so that the legend would fit in the space on the map. Everything else is exactly the same.
I was concerned about continuity in the maps. The first two are exactly the same. But I found the font for the numbers was too large and busy for the final map. Rather than switch the fonts in the first two maps, I left them because I found the overall effect of the font on the maps pleasing and I don't think it is too much of a challenge to read. I chose this font, even though it is a little "curly-que" because my concept of the map was of something whimsical. Probably because intially I was thinking of those who work at home; I think that working at home gives people the opportunity to express themselves in a way that is not always available to the work-a-day world. The final map is more complex, particularly the legend. So I changed the font of the numbers to increase simplicity and it allowed me to reduce the size so that the legend would fit in the space on the map. Everything else is exactly the same.
The colors in the legend in the bivariate map were challenging as well. I found these colors by playing with the swatch maker. I chose pink/purple and green for the map so that the middle ground wouldn't have to be gray. The final colors though are grayed and sort of muddied. It gives the whole map a muddy feel to me. I don't like that very much, I prefer clear tones, but I don't see how you can do that in this type of map, with the colors in the legend needing to blend the way they do. Perhaps if I had fiddled around longer I would have come up with something more pleasing to my eye. I do think that the colors are distinguishable from one another which is more important than my liking of the colors so I went with them.
// posted by Elizabeth Hull @ 12:47 PM 
