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.