Own Your Map-Week 2 Lab

This week's assignment focused on map presentation and exploring different cartographic designs. Before a map is produced, the cartographer needs to ask themselves different questions. Who will the target audience be? What kind of information is being portrayed? How should the layout and sizing be formatted? How should the essential map elements be displayed? I spent a considerable amount of time playing with different sizings, fonts, positioning, and colors. The biggest challenge for me was making the layout appropriate and to size, while including the Neatline. When adding symbology, making sure the placement properties were adjusted properly was another added skill I had not used before. While a map is creative and unique to the cartographer producing them, publishing a map that others can easily navigate is crucial and adhering to industry standards helps the end product be unique, concise, and favorable. We also learned how to create and analyze data. Citing the correct metadata sources is an ethical and important element to consider. We spent a lot of time learning how to locate citation information by viewing the Data Item Description for each layer. "Customize>ArcMap Options>Metadata tab>ISO 19139 Metadata….GML3.2" provided a more detailed Data Item Description to pull the information from. It was pretty easy to find all the information. The biggest challenge was finding the correct publication dates. However, following the Data Quality Lineage helped overcome this obstacle.  On this map, we also learned how to create an inset map, how to create a data frame, and work within each frame to edit the cartographic choices. By the end of lab, we had the tools to create a professional, well sourced, unique map!

Overview ArcGis Lab-Week 1

This week was an introductory on how to create a map in Overview ArcGis Lab. We learned how to navigate through ArcMap and familiarize with all of the different tools and settings. Simple yet crucial steps were learned in the map-making process such as how to launch ArcGis/ArcMap, review the individual file components of a shapefile (DBF, SHP, SHX, etc...), navigate ArcHelp, construct a basic map showing the population of chosen world countries, identify MXD map file and export map images to JPG or PNG format in ArcMap, and complete a process summary. I made sure to take my time and explore different options, while starting over when I made mistakes. I feel confident moving forward that I can progress creatively and learn how to produce quality, more complex maps, while learning GIS applications!