Map Critiques

Rock In Rio Festival

 

This map's goal is to guide the public attending RockInRio Festival. The oblique angle is an intersting point of view, but it can be hard to relate with the locator in the lower right. Although it's possible to identify the sea, there's no much contrast between the body map and the ground, so the figure-ground of this map is low. The legilibily is acceptable, considering no text labels were placed in the map, only numeric labels refering to a legend. That was a good way to avoid the legibility problem easily found when labeling. Considering the clarity, some orange and yellow number labels were placed in orange/yellow background, making it hard to visualize the difference. The visual hierarchy is good because the map body occupies a large space, gaining a lot of attention. However, some elements were missing, like a nice title, a neatline, scale, north arrow etc. For last, the balance is reasonable, but maybe it would be interesting to use the upper left area to add something, since there's an empty space there. 

 

Hurricane Sandy - Probability of Tropical Storm

 

The figure-ground of this map barely exists, since it's hard to distinguish what is the ground. The sea, continent and graticule have much more attention than they were suppose to, considering the focus of the map is the location of the tropical storm. Light colors would help to solve this hierarchy problem. There's no problems with the clarity, it's easy to distinguish different features in the map. However, the text could be a little bigger in same cases, like in "Bermuda", where is really hard to read it, impacting its legibility. For last, there's a lack of balance in this map, since you can see a big empty space in the east side of the map.

 

 

Middle Earth Map

 

 Considering today was the premiere of "The Hobbit" at the movies, a map of the Middle Earth - fiction place were Tolkien stories happen - was chosen to receive a critique. The use of one only tone is obviously necessary to transmit the idea of an epic and old age. However, the repetition of colors makes the legibility harder in someways. The figure-ground is also a little tricky: if you look it very well, you can distinguish what is the continent and what's the sea, but only because the text and boundarie features, there's no change in the hue or anything like that. The balance is reasonable, there's no cluttered spaces, except for those with the mountains, but it's part of the regional geomorphology. The hierarchy is acceptable, almost all the basic elements are included and they follow a logical order of importance. Of course the map is missing information about the projection, but this is something to think: what would be such projection? Is middle earth located in a sphere surface, like Earth? Maybe all this challenges, like distinguishing labels, areas, continent and sea are part of the Lord of The Rings task! ;)

 

Central Park Map - New York City

The figure ground of this map is confusing: if the ground was suppose to be the streets of new york, they should have a lighter color that didn't pop out so much. The legibily is complicated in some points, mainly in some lakes, where the hue of the color is too similar. It's also considered a clarity problem, but other than that, the features colors are distinguishable. A lot of information is concentrated in the center-south portion of the map, affecting the balance. lastly, the hierarchy makes sense, however, it's missing some elements, like a legend for the different colors used.



 

 

Rainfall in Campinas Metropolitan Area - Hazard Management

 

 

For last, it's time to practice self-analysis. This map was designed by me and adapted to the following operations in the Hazard Management department of AGEMCAMP, a City Planning Organization where I was an intern. This map was made a long time before this class, what makes me realize how much I could improve it right now. The figure-ground is reasonable, but for style purposes, it would be interesting to have some light color in the background. Most documents that would include this map would already have a white background, so a different hue could make a difference. The information is too crowded in the left side of the map. Maybe one of the legends could be placed in another place. The legibily is reasonable, but the clarity is compromised in some features located too close from each other, like "Postos Pluviometricos" and "Postos Telemetricos". In this cases, I would use the displacement technique to make it more clear. The hierarchy is good, but it's missing some information and basic elements of a map.