Selecting Color Schemes and Converting Colors

One of the most important aspects of making a map look professional is selecting colors. In our last project, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to select custom colors that worked well together and did not overpower other elements of the maps. In doing reasearch for another class I happened upon a site devoted to assisting in the selection fo colors for maps. The site is http://colorbrewer2.org/ . At first glance this page seemed somewhat interesting, but the more I explored, the more useful things I found. It is possible to create a complete color scheme including selecting the colors or roads and city names, and then, at the click of a mouse the map can be toggled between several color schemes to show the difference in appearence. You can even select schemes that are freindly to colorblind readers. This site includes a link to a fully functional colorscheme generator that is an extension for ArcGIS 9.x. You will also find a downloadable Excel file that list every color scheme with the number settings and color swatches. This is worth a quick investigation.

For an initiation to annotation, this was a good project. It clearly demonstrated the advantages of annotation for truely detailed maps. ArcMap can dynamicaly place labels and with enough time and patience a very satisfactory outcome can be acheived, but to reach a level of detail and accuracy suited to professional maps, annotations are critical. Labels that are intended to contour to natural features like rivers can suffer from the limited intelligence of ArcMap. Labels for curved features required a good deal of  adjustment to improve the appearence of the lable.
To the right are two final maps. The lower right map was prepared using the standard labels and annotations in ArcMap. The map, top right, is labeled using the Maplex extension. Although the map, prepared with dynamic labels and annotations in ArcMap, is more visualy attractive, it took far longer to label and did not contain as much detail.
For users of ArcMap who have access to, but have not used, the Maplex extension, it merits some serious investigation. To activate the Maplex extension click help in ArcMap and type in Maplex. If Maplex is available it will only take a few clicks of the mouse to begin testing this feature.

Western North Carolina Mapping Project

The attached map is an incomplete map at this point. I am still working on annotations to present the maximum amount of information.
The intent of this project is to supply a map of Western North Carolina and surrounding areas. This map is designed as a base map for many possible mapping purposes. By removing selected layers, this map can easily be configured to focus upon selected features. Removal of urban areas and some or all road types, would yeild a map suitable for watershed mapping or fish and wildlife data.
I have included four images of my map. Each is intended to be printed with a standard inkjet printer on 8.5 x 11 paper. At this point there is more work to be done but this shows the versatility of the map. All four images were created and added to this blog in less than five minutes and just a few clicks of the mouse.

I welcome comments to this project.