For Lab 3 we used Gestalt's Principles: Visual Hierarchy, Figure-ground, Contrast, and Balance to create a map of the public schools in Ward 7, Washington D.C. The data provided was from Open Data DC containing Neighborhoods, Ward 7 boundary, DC boundary, Parks, Surface Water, Streets, Interstates, and Highways and DC Public Schools.
Once adding all of the layers into my main map, I used the clip tool so that only schools within Ward 7 appeared on the map. Then, I changed the symbology of the schools using the Gallery tab in the Symbology pane to a symbol of a school and to a red color. To create contrast, I changed the size and shade of red for the school symbols based on the type of school to help the map viewer differentiate. The elementary schools were the smallest symbol and the lightest shade of red and the high schools were the largest symbol with the darkest shade of red. The middle schools were in the middle in size and shade. I also established figure-ground relationship in my map by accentuating the study area by making it a lighter gray color than the rest of Washington DC. Figure-ground was accomplished with the school symbols by making them a bright red with a dark halo on top of the gray-white background to make them appear easily to the map viewer.
For the transportation symbology, I created contrast I by making the lines different widths based on the type of road. The highways were the thickest width with a brighter color in the Ward 7 study area while the neighborhood streets with speeds from 5-25 mph were the thinnest and a lighter off-white color. Outside of the Ward 7 study area, I also used difference in width for the major roads that are present in the rest of the DC area on the main map and in the inset map. For the inset map, I turned off the streets layer so that only major transportation arteries were shown.
Then, I began to add labels for the neighborhoods and streets in Ward 7 and converted the labels to annotation to customize until I achieved the aesthetic result that I wanted. For the first time I tried creating a label using the curved text option within the layout view. I used this option to created the label for the Anacostia River.
I implemented visual hierarchy in my map by giving the most important school symbols a bright red
color and a thick outline so that they stand out to the viewer. Also, my title
is the largest text on the map which is the second most important item of
Gestalt’s hierarchy after the thematic symbols. The legend is stands out
comparatively to the other elements as well due to its size, white background
and bright symbols. The bar scale and data source are deemphasized with a
smaller size as they are less important elements of the map.
Finally, I incorporated Gestalt's Principle of balance in my final map design by adding map elements in the empty spaces around the main map study area. The shape of the map created triangles of white space which made the rectangle inset map and legend look awkward and visually displeasing. Therefore, the inset map and legend looked best to the left of the study area over the rest of DC. Then, I placed the other map elements in the white spaces below and above the main map study area since these were smaller and fit better in these spaces.
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