Cartographic Design Lab: Ward 7 Schools

This week we produced a map showing Elementary, Middle and High Schools in Ward 7 of Washington, D.C.   It included an insert map showing the location of Ward 7 within the city.  The focus of the lab was to use key design elements when producing a map.

I tried using Gestalt's Principles of visual hierarchy, contrast, figure-ground relationship, and balance.  By using larger, bright red symbols, schools become the emphasis. Ward 7 is easy to see because the light color shows up well against both grey and blue.  Streets are less important, so they have a light grey color and thin lines. I balanced the map by placing three similar-sized boxes containing the inset map, legend, and title in a roughly triangular formation.  Less important elements such as the north arrow, scale, data source and author/date are in smaller font with no borders.

It is easy to spend lots of time playing around with design elements - tweaking could be nearly endless if there weren't so many other things to do.