GIS4043 - Week 2 - Own Your Map

UWF Main Campus Location

In this week's lab assignment I felt more comfortable navigating in ArcMap.  Creating a map of UWF’s Main Campus location with an inset map of Counties of Florida was a challenge for me.   The lab guidelines helped me to explore and understand the functions of ArcGIS while creating a useful map.   I also learned about essential map elements and guidelines to follow before designing a map.  Learning how to find map information from metadata was the most difficult portion of this lab.  Metadata provided for different layers can be uniquely displayed by different metadata styles.   Knowing where to find a value or description was important in this lab.  For my UWF Main Campus Location map I chose to maintain the Portrait orientation as the instructor had because I felt Escambia County would fit better and provide me with ample map space to place essential map elements.  I chose a light green for the background color of Escambia County so there would be some contrast with important items placed on the map.  I chose to place my scale bar on the bottom right as that placement location was closest to the interstate routes on the UWF layer as well as the campus location.  I learned how and where to change the location placement of city names around the city point symbology.  Placement of the UWF logo needed to allow it to be legible and non-intrusive.  Similarly, the legend needed ample map space to make it easy to read and locate.  I chose to place the legend closest to the features shown on the map and to place the logo next to the title.  I enjoyed having some autonomy in this lab but also some guidelines and steps to follow.  I am realizing how important understanding your map audience is in the design of a map.