Lecture 2

Map design
Model of the course
Using and
making maps
Navigating Map
GIS maps design

Interactive Map
Working with maps layouts Analyzing
spatial data Spatial data
Map
Animations Proximity
Spatial data analysis
infrastructure
Spatial Raster Data
analysis analysis mining
Geoprocessing File
geodatabases
3D GIS Network
analysis
Digitizing Geocoding
Spatial
regression
 Outline
 Graphic design principles
 Color
 Symbolizing points
 Symbolizing lines
 Symbolizing polygons
 GIS queries

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Lecture 2

GRAPHIC DESIGN
PRINCIPLES
 Light vs. dark colors
 High color “value” (dark color) is perceived
as more important

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 Contrast

 The greater the difference in value between

an object and its background, the greater the
contrast.
 Keep the background light and use lots of
contrast for important features!

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 Bad map: Not enough contrast
Contrast is needed to distinguish features

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 Good map: better contrast

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 Graphic hierarchy

 Assign bright colors (red, orange, yellow, green,

blue) to important graphic elements (features)
 Important features are known as “figure”

All features in figure

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 Graphic hierarchy

 Assign drab colors to the graphic elements that

provide orientation or context
 Contextual features known as “ground”

Circles in figure, squares and lines in

ground

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 Bad and good maps

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 Graphic hierarchy
 Place a strong boundary, such as a heavy black
line, around points or polygons that are
important to increase figure

 Use a coarse, heavy cross-hatch or pattern to

make some polygons important, placing them in
figure

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 Overarching principle

 Due to John Tukey, author of a classic

series of books on graphic design:
Minimize ink!
 Use lots of white space and make every
pixel count
 Elements you can and should delete
are “chart junk”

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 Bad map: chart junk

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 Good map: chart junk gone

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 Lecture 2

COLOUR

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 Terms
 Hue is the basic colour

 Value is the amount of black in the colour, here

seen in saturated colour ramps
(ranging from a pure
hue to gray or black)

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 Colour wheel
 Device that provides
guidance in choosing
colours
 Use opposite colours to
differentiate graphic features
 Three or four colours equally
spaced around the wheel are
good choices for differentiating
graphic features
 Use adjacent colours for
harmony, such as blue, blue
green, and green or red, red
orange, and orange

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 Monochromatic colour scale
 Series of colors of the same hue with colour
value varied from low to high (or vice versa)
 Use more light shades of a hue than dark
shades in monochromatic scales
 The human eye can better differentiate among light
shades than dark shades

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 Dichromatic colour scale
 Used for attributes that have a natural middle
such as 0
 Examples: regression residuals, increases and
decreases, etc.
 Two monochromatic scales joined together
with a low colour value in the center, with
colour value increasing toward both ends

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 Dichromatic map
Symmetric break points centered on 0 make it
easy to interpret the map

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 Diochromatic map example

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 Colour tips
 Colours have meaning
 Political and cultural

 Cool colours
 Calming
 Appear smaller
 Recede

 Warm colours
 Exciting
 Overpower cool colours

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 Learn more about GIS colours
 Website
 http://colorbrewer2.org/

 Books
 Brewer, Cynthia A. 2008. Designed Maps: A
Sourcebook for GIS Users. Redlands: ESRI
Press
 Brewer, Cynthia A. 2005. Designing Better Maps:
A Guide for GIS Users. Redlands: ESRI Press

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 Lecture 2

SYMBOLIZING POINTS

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 Undifferentiated points

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 Unique-values symbolization

 Differentiated points, based on code attribute.

 Use shape and colour.

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 Size-graduated point markers

 For magnitude at points

 Use exaggerated size differences

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 Industry-specific point markers

 Not good for multiple features at smaller

scales
 Simple points better for analysis

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 Industry-specific point markers

 Good for large scale (zoomed in) maps

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 Lecture 2

SYMBOLIZING LINES

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 Displaying lines
 For analytical maps, most lines are ground
features and should be light shades (e.g.
gray or light brown)

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 Displaying lines
 Consider using dashed lines to signify less
important line features and solid lines for the
important ones
 Use industry standards

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 Displaying polygons
 Consider using no outline or dark gray for
boundaries of most polygons
 Dark gray makes the polygons prominent
enough, but not so much that they compete for
attention with more important graphic features

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Lecture 2

SYMBOLIZING POLYGONS
 Unique values
Use code values for symbolization

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 Choropleth maps
 Color-coded polygon maps
 Represent numeric attributes (e.g.,
population, number of housing units,
percentage of vacant housing units)

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 Bad map, good map: monochromatic

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 What kind of data to plot?

 Depends on purpose
 Population (or population segment) to study
demand for goods/services
 Population density (e.g., persons/sq. mile) for
behavior (such as contagion)
 Normalized population segment (population
segment/total population) to study composition or
behaviour

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 Population: choropleth map

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 Population: graduated point markers

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 Fishnet

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 Population density

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 Population dot density

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 Population segment

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 Normalized population segment

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 Numeric scales
 Process of placing data into groups (classes
or bins) defined by break points
 Break points
 Are right sides of intervals
 Keep the number of intervals
small (3-7)
 Use a mathematical progression
or formula instead of arbitrary values Break
points

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 1. Quantiles
 Places the same number of data values in
each class
 Will never have empty classes or classes
with too few or too many values
 Analysts use quantiles a lot
 Because they provide information about the
shape of the distribution
 Almost always the first scale that I use for a new
map

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 Quantile example
Shows that an increasing width (geometric) scale is needed

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 Increasing width scales
 Data distributions often deviate from a bell-
shaped curve and most often are skewed to
the right with the right tail elongated (long-
tailed distributions)
 Alternative 1: Keep doubling the interval of each category,
0–5, 5–15, 15–35, 35–75 have interval widths of 5, 10, 20,
and 40.
 Alternative 2: Exponential/geometric break points that are
powers such as 2n or 3n times 10 to an integer power.
 Can start with zero as an additional class if that value

appears in the data

 0, 1–2, 3–4, 5–8, 9–16, and so forth

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 Custom geometric scale
 Powers of 2

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 2. Equal intervals
 Easiest to understand
 Best to use familiar interval widths that are 1,
2, or 5 times 10 to a power but have to
implement manually
 Example interval widths: 100, 200, 300, etc.
 Not good for highly-peaked or skewed data
distributions

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 Equal interval example
Not good here because too many tracts fall into low
classes

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 3. Natural breaks (Jenks)
 May be useful for exploratory work
 Picks breaks points using a clustering
method: maximizes the differences between
classes and minimizes differences within
classes
 Generally, there are relatively large jumps in
value between classes and class intervals
are variable in width
 Class ranges are specific to the individual
dataset, thus it is difficult to compare maps

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 Original maps (natural breaks)

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 New maps (same classes)

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 Lecture 2

GIS QUERIES

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 GIS queries
 Powerful relationship between data table
and vector-based graphics—unique to GIS
 Records from a feature attribute table are
selected by using query criteria
 Query will automatically highlight the
corresponding graphic features

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 Simple attribute queries
 Simple query criterion
 <data attribute>< logical operator><value>
 NatureCode ='DRUGS'
 DATE >= '20120701'

 % wild card
 % symbol stands for zero, one, or more characters of any
kind
 NAME like ' BUR%'
 Selects any crime with names starting with the letters BUR,
including burglaries (BUR), business burglaries(BURBUS),
and residential burglaries (BURRES)

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 Simple attribute queries

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 Compound attribute queries

 Compound query criteria

 Combine two or more simple queries with the logical
connectives AND or OR
 "NATURE_COD" = 'DRUGS' AND "DATE" > 20120801
 Selects records that satisfy both criteria simultaneously
 Result are drug crimes that were committed after August 1,
2012

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 Compound attribute queries

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 Summary
 Graphic design principles
 Color
 Symbolizing points
 Symbolizing lines
 Symbolizing polygons
 GIS queries

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