So I've created a map with a page layout, with all of the basic map elements that I need including my map data. What I want to do now is show you some basic, simple, quick things that you can do to improve the actual map design for this. It'll improve the communication, it will improve the way it looks, and overall, you'll just end up with something that's just a much more pleasing, useful map that's easier for people to interpret and to understand. So one of the first things I'm going to do is point out to you that the area that I actually want to focus on, which is Toronto, is oriented in a funny way in terms of the relation to the page layout. So, I have north pointing straight up. When I do that, I've got this kind of strange angle to Toronto. So, one of the things people tend to think, especially when they're starting out, is that North must point up. Well, it doesn't have to, and I'll show you how you can adjust the rotation of the map to make the area that you're mapping fit better on your page layout. I can add a tool bar called DataFrame tools, and this will allow me to actually rotate the DataFrame. I happen to know that if I put in 342 degrees, I can make my map so that the top of Toronto is parallel with the top of my DataFrame. So when I do that, I can actually zoom in on Toronto a bit. Let's try a scale of 200,000. You can zoom in a bit more. So, the detail of the city, of the area that I'm mapping is a little easier to see. I've zoomed in. I've increased the map scale. I've made a larger map scale. You'll notice when I do this, that north does not point straight up anymore. That is not a mistake. It's not a disaster. It's not something horrible. You're allowed to do that. Usually, it's okay. I tend to think that it's most acceptable when you're not going very far from north. In this case, it's not that far off. If it was wildly off, then maybe you'd want to think carefully about whether that's going to be confusing to people. But in this case, all I'm saying is north is a little bit off and it's a way that you can see the layout of my mapped area a little more clearly. That's it. So, a little trick you can use. So let's start moving things around a little bit. Maybe I want my scale, north arrow to the way a little bit. Just move my north arrow there. The next thing I'd like to do is make the data that I'm trying to show people, which is population density for the City of Toronto, a little more easy to interpret. If I just have it all the same color, you can't really see the data at all. So, let's make a choropleth map. I'll show you how to do that. If I right-click on this Feature Class, and go to Properties, and then go to Symbology, I can select Quantities, Graduated colors. I'm going to use a value for this. I happened to know, I don't have them labeled in here. They happen to know that column 11 is population density for the City of Toronto, and I can choose a color ramp for that. So, this is actually a pretty nice one. I'll use that to just to make it pop a little bit. So, you'll see that this has actually giving me five classes, and it's based on natural breaks or jenks. I'm going to actually changed that classification to quantiles I think that's actually a little easier to interpret in terms of relative positions of different classes. So, I'm going to have five quantiles, say, "Okay," and that's changed my class boundaries. Now, I can also change the labels. You'll notice that I've got all these extra trailing zeros that I don't really need. I've got one significant digit really after the decimal place. So, maybe what I'll do is right-click on that say Format Labels and reduce the number of decimal places down to one. I'm going to add thousands separators. I think sometimes it makes it easier to read. So, now the labels for my legend will be a little more clear, and I can say "Okay." So, now I've got a legend where the classes indicate the population density. So, the lighter the value, the lower the density. The darker the value, the higher the density. So, that looks okay. So, you'll notice that by default, in my legend, it's got a subtitle here of COL11 because that was the name of the field I used to do the mapping with. I could actually change that. I can just go up to the table of contents here and say, "By quantile." I think that's actually more useful information, so that when someone is looking my legends, it's really obvious to them that they're looking at people per square kilometer by quantile. Now, what else can we do? You know what? I think I'm going to make Lake Ontario a nice blue. Let's make it. Well, let's go with the blue that as we recommends. We'll start with that and see how that looks with no outline color, and say, "Okay." I'm going to do the same kind of thing here. Instead of just going with a default feature class name that was in the geodatabase, which is Lake_Ontario, I can easily just change this in the table of contents, and it will change it in the legend. So, now it says Lake Ontario in the legend. Now, I've already got a label on the lake that says Lake Ontario. So, do I really need this in the legend at all? Maybe not, you don't always have to include everything every time in every legend. I think it's, again, it's something people cling to when they're starting, they're like, "Well, that's easy for me to remember." If so, it's not a bad thing to have it in there, but I could just as easily take it out. If I right-click on my Legend and say, "Properties," and go to General, I can select Lake Ontario and just remove it from the Legend. I think it's safe to do that here because it's not something that it's going to really confuse people, especially if I make sure that the lake itself is labeled. So, my legend is starting to look a little bit better. Now I'm going to work a little bit on the background here. I want to improve the figure ground. I think that the, there's a couple of things that I think are good or bad, are working, not working. You'll see that this is just the default color that ArcMap gave the census tracks outside of the city. So, what I want to point out here is that I actually included those. If I didn't, then you end up with this blank void around your mapped area. Sometimes that's okay. If it's a simple map for a figure in a report or something like that, that's okay, but I often find that it looks better and provides a little more context if you have something in the background, and it does help establish a better figure-ground relationships. So if I include that, it fills out the map better. Note that I'm using census tracks for the background, which is the same type of unit I'm using for the foreground. So, they go together. It makes sense to use those. Then, I'm going to change it, so that there's something subtle like a very light gray. Actually, I'm going to lighten that up even more. Yes, I'm going to change the value of this to higher. So, it's gray, but it's a very light gray. Then, the outline color is going to be just a slightly darker gray. So, you'll notice now that the census tracks are still visible, but they're subtle. I want them to look like they're in the background. I want to make it clear to the map reader that the foreground of the map, the figure of the map is the magenta area and the ground, the background is the lake in the surrounding census tracts. One thing I could do just to tailor things even a little bit more is go to the properties for my choropleth map, and I select all of the values here, and right-click and say, "Properties for Selected Symbols." The outline color, I can make something that would match the map a little bit better. So, I'm going to make it sort of this dark purple, maybe this purple here, and say, "Okay." So, now, instead of just going with the default gray, I've got a color that complements the feel of my choropleth map a little bit better, so that you have something that's just not always black or gray in the background, but it's something that just enhances or complements the map a little bit better. I should change this to something a little more informative. So, let's say, "Census tracks outside study area." So, now we've got a legend that's looking pretty good. Something else I could do just to clean things up a little, this is just me being a little bit finicky, is for the frame itself, the color of the border, I can make it complements the lake a little bit more. So, I could make it just sort of a blue but slightly darker than the background lake. So, now you can just barely see it. So, that outline is delineating the legend from the lake itself but in a very subtle way. You'll notice, by the way, that the legend is white. I didn't leave it hollow, so that you have this blue underneath all of the text. It's too hard to read. You have to have the white fill with a legend if you're going to have a different color in the background. If it's the same color in the background, you don't necessarily have to have a frame around the legend at all. Just some other things I can do to finish this off. For example, I can customize the scale bar here. So, for example, I can change the Scale and Units. I'd like them to be in kilometers. That works for me. If I wanted, I could change the text that's used, the font, the size, the color, and so on. You can customize the Numbers and Mark. So, for example, if I wanted, I could change the symbol to something that's a different color, so it matches the blue background of the lake. Obviously, you don't want it to match exactly, but you want it to be something that is similar. So, I might go with a darker blue or something like that. Let's just see how that looks. Say, "Okay." So, that's for the text itself. So, that actually looks pretty good. I could do the same thing for the rest of the legend. I can change the color of the labeling for the units. I can change the color of the bar itself. Say, "Okay." So, now I've got a scale bar that's more subtle. It complements the color of the lake, but it's visible if your map reader really wants to have a look at it. There's a few steps there. You don't need to do this for every map that you create, but it's a nice touch if you put a little bit of extra customization into it. I can customize the north arrow as well. If I just right-click on that and select Properties, I can change the color to something that's complementing the lake, such as that, and say, "Okay." So, now the north arrow is matching the scale bar. Again, it's subtle. It's there, but it's not as obvious. Now we can change the properties for Lake Ontario. I think what I'll do here is use the serif fonts, something like Cambria. I want to make it a little bit larger. Let's make it, say, 16, italics, and the same blue I'm using for my other map symbols. Say, "Okay." So, now I've got something that follows a style convention for bodies of water. It's italic, it's that darker blue color. I've used a serif font, which I think was a nice touch for it there. So, now I'm starting to like the way things look. I'm going to move my legend a little bit, so it's framed nicely in the corner. So, I hope you've seen that I've been able to greatly improve the map design with only a few steps and really not that much effort or time required. Let's say this map is perfect. There's always room for a little bit of improvement here and there, but I think I've taken something that was pretty lousy. If you just go with the default colors and line thicknesses and so on for a map, you're not going to get something that looks great. But if you spend a little bit of time and look at the placement of the map elements, the balance, the colors, the figure versus ground to make sure that relationship is clear, you customize the legend to make sure that that's interpretable for somebody, they can see what that's about, what's there, what's supposed to be, understood about that. If you put all these things together and spend a little bit of time and effort on these, you'll end up with a map that looks so much better, and people will just be more impressed by it hopefully and will be able to interpret that more efficiently, and that's really what this is about, as you're meant to be trying to communicate something quickly, easily, and efficiently so that someone looks at your map and they can understand it.
