GIS Week 3: Cartography Lab

This week was all about incorporating cartographic best practices into our GIS outputs, and the lab assignment walked us through creating three different maps of Mexico, each highlighting different types of data and how we could use ArcMap to present that data clearly and attractively. This week was also the first time in this course that we looked at raster data (a DEM) and delved into customizing a map's legend.

The map I'm choosing to share (below) isn't my favorite from this week, but it's the one I feel I got the most out of making. For this map we were tasked with simplifying a rather complex (and therefore difficult to read) set of transportation features, by using the attributes tables to single out only the most important rivers and highways for display and ordering the map layers so that everything was as visible as possible. (I have mixed feelings about my red road network, but needed it to be distinct from the black railroads and also needed it to be easy to see without being easily mistaken for a natural feature.) We also played with the city labels to make them more readable and to make the Distrito Federal stand out. The inset map shows which area of Mexico the main map displays, and the coolest thing I learned this week was how to make ArcMap automatically highlight the extent of the main map on the inset map.