Description
Focusing on fundamental cartographic design principles, this course teaches how to create attractive maps that are easy to interpret and properly designed for their audience and delivery medium. You will learn to produce high-quality, database-driven maps by applying a standard cartographic workflow. This course is taught with an ArcInfo license of ArcGIS Desktop 10.0 software, and some course exercises use tools provided in ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and Maplex for ArcGIS.
Who Should Attend
- Experienced ArcGIS Desktop users with little or no cartographic experience.
- Experienced cartographers with limited ArcGIS Desktop experience who want to create data-driven maps.
Learn How To
After completing this course, you will be able to
- Plan a cartographic project.
- Evaluate data for cartographic purposes.
- Create appropriate symbology, map elements, and layout designs for different types of maps.
- Create labels and annotation that are easy to read by the map's intended audience.
- Apply a standard cartographic workflow to create maps efficiently using ArcGIS.
- Produce maps for a variety of delivery media, including a web mapping application.
Esri will provide the following software to use during class:
- ArcGIS 10.0 for Desktop (ArcInfo)
- ArcGIS 10.0 for Server Workgroup (Standard)
- ArcGIS 10.0 Spatial Analyst
- Maplex for ArcGIS 10.0
The cartographic planning process
- Map scale
- Map templates
- Design controls
- Cartographic workflow
- Quality control
Selecting and evaluating data
- Organizing data
- Designing a cartographic database
- Evaluating data quality
- Preparing data
Choosing a coordinate system
- How to choose an effective coordinate system
- Geographic coordinate systems
- Projected coordinate systems
- Evaluating map projection properties
Elements of map design
- Designing based on map type
- Visual weight, contrast, and figure-ground
- Color concepts for cartography
- Designing for a color-impaired audience
Qualitative and quantitative symbols
- Classified versus unclassified data
- Normalizing data
- Designing color schemes
- Choropleth mapping workflow
- Classification methods
- Graduated versus proportional symbols
Advanced symbology techniques
- Strategies for managing symbols
- Creating multilayered symbols
- Using cartographic representations
- Creating custom marker and cartographic line symbols
- Symbol-level drawing
Generalization
- When to generalize data
- Methods of generalization
- Aggregating polygon features using a model
- Collapsing polygon features
Symbolizing elevation
- Methods of symbolizing elevation
- Designing elevation color ramps
- Hypsometric tints
- Creating hillshades
- Creating a whitewash effect
- Image flattening
Working with map labels
- Type basics for cartography
- Label placement guidelines
- Using the Maplex for ArcGIS extension
- Label expressions
Working with annotation
- Types of annotation
- Choosing between labels and annotation
- Designing annotation for print and web maps
- Annotation feature classes and feature templates
- Editing annotation
- Quality control
Map layouts
- Planning a layout design
- Setting page properties
- Using grids and guides to position layout elements
- Adding coordinate grids
Map element design
- Designing map titles, legends, and scale bars
- Other map elements to consider
- Quality control for map elements
Map output
- Designing symbols for print and web maps
- Evaluating output quality
- Publishing a map service using ArcGIS Server Manager
- Publishing a map in PDF format
