Lab 10

In this lab the objective was to use proportional flow lines to portray the immigration of people into the United States in 2007.  The usage of the flow lines was pretty basic once you got the hang of using the pen tool which was much easier after watching the Adobe video on the website.  Before that I really had no clue what I was doing.  Also we were introduced into stylizing objects by using the 3-D effects, drop shadow, and inner glow.  I think that drop shadow was my favorite, hence why I used it on all of my flow lines.  I am becoming much more comfortable in using the basic AI tools to do the tasks that we need to do for each map, such as the neatline.  One of the most frustrating parts of this lab for me was changing the color scheme for the U.S. map.  For some reason every time I selected the states and changed the color it would just make the borders go away.  It took me about four times to realize that I had the stroke selected.  Whoops!  After that the rest of the lab went smooth besides playing with the effects.  Playing with the effects was time consuming but fun because it really allowed me to further explore the power of AI.  Below is my final product.

Lab 9

This lab was all about isarithmic mapping. Isarithmic mapping is mostly known in its for as a contour map. It is mainly used when the data set shows a smooth transition between phenomena. This lab we mapped the average annual rainfall for Washington state over the past 30 years, from 1980-2010. We used two different types of maps, the continuous-tone and the hypsometric tint. The continuous tone map uses a gradient color scale to show the change from low to high concentration. The hypsometric tint map, on the other hand, uses a stepping scale much like a chloropleth map. Also the hypsometric tint map uses data classification to break up the phenomena into classes. I prefered this map because I felt that it was easier to see the distinct changes between concentrations. Overall, I liked this lab because the instructions were very laid out and easy to follow. The one thing that I did not like is how ArcMap has the contour lines set up. You have to manually insert the data points at which you want your contours to appear. I feel that with the automation that ArcMap has built into it there should be an option to allow it to figure out the best points for your contours.

Lab 8

In Lab 8 we were introduced into proportional mapping.  This type of map uses a geometric or symbol shape to show the volume of an attribute.  This lab looked at European wine consumption in 2010.  The first map we used only ArcMap to create.  Mine did not turn out all that pretty but the instructions were to leave the default settings.  This caused me to end up with multiple country labels.  This first lab was the one that gave me the most trouble because first the spreadsheet that we needed to import wouldn't allow me to calculate the root of the wine consumption.  We needed to calculate that so we could show proportionally how much each country consumed.  Also, I kept trying to CTRL+Z to undo the action that I just did.  That only erased my layers quite a few times.  It was unbeliveably frustrating for me because I would have to redo the wine root as well as re-add the shape file.  I kept the "hollow" circles because I felt that with the color contrast it was easy to discern the size.  The map below is what I ended up with.

The legend gave me trouble as well.  For some reason I could not get more symbols on the legend to show the actual number proportions.  It was very frustrating.  I am not sure if I was doing something wrong or if I needed to export it into AI to finish that part to make it where I wanted it.  But, the lab said to leave it so I followed directions, this time.

The below map is the second part of the lab.  This map was zoomed in with ArcMap and then immediately exported to AI.  The rest of it was finished in AI.  I actually felt much more comfortable with AI than ArcMap.  This was strange for me because in the beginning it was the opposite way around.  Today I was actually able to get AI to do what I wanted.  For example, the black border, I would have never attempted to do because it hid the north arrow and the scale bar.  It took me a second to figure out the scale bar because at first I was only able to get the numbers to be white.  After a while I realized that I needed to change both of the colors to white and then it worked!  I am becoming much more comfortable with AI and I like that because of how powerful of a tool it is.