Now that you’ve finished this lesson, you should have a solid understanding of the importance of visual design, and the many factors that must be considered when making a map. During this lesson, we discussed the importance of considering a map’s audience, medium, and purpose – three vital factors to consider when planning a map.
We also introduced the idea of symbol design, and how to leverage order and category of visual variables to create a more informative map. At the end of the lesson, we touched on issues of scale and map-sharing, which we explore in more depth later this semester. In this lesson’s lab, we began applying this knowledge by building general-purpose maps using ArcGIS Pro and a popular source of open-source geospatial data: The National Map.
You have reached the end of Lesson 1! Double-check the to-do list on the Lesson 1 Overview page [13] to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 2.
Links
[1] https://nationalmap.gov/
[2] https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/
[3] https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/services/
[4] https://www.mrlc.gov/index.php
[5] http://www.naturalearthdata.com/
[6] http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/
[7] https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/
[8] https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-cart-boundary.html
[9] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/38.007/-95.844
[10] http://www.pasda.psu.edu/
[11] http://wvgis.wvu.edu/data/data.php
[12] https://www.kansasgis.org/index.cfm
[13] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog486/node/808