Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Module 7: Proportional Map Symbols

This was the first exercise where I felt immediately comfortable with the technical aspects of the assignment. In addition, I am feeling more and more confident with the nuances of Adobe Illustrator. As a result, I was able to devote the majority of my time to the design and appearance of my map. I hoped to establish a noticeable figure ground with the light blue background and purple circles for my proportional symbols.

One problem I encountered was with changing the color of my country labels. At first, when I attempted to lighten the labels to gray, my entire artboard would turn the same color. After a few moments of frustration, I realized that my label layer had imported a path shape from ArcGIS. As soon as I identified this, I was able to delete it and continue.

MS Excel's function features allowed me to calculate circle sizes needed quickly, and I ended up with what has been my favorite map project so far!

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