The conditions of use are going to have a big effect on your map design. So, things like lighting, where is your map going to be viewed in terms of lighting? Is it going to be backlight? Is it going to have a light on the front of it? Is it going to be in a book? Is it going to be on a screen? If you have low lighting conditions, you may want to use brighter colors, then you would use otherwise. If it's going to be on-screen, that's another case where you might want to use brighter colors. So for example, if it's going to be used in Powerpoint, it depends on the lighting in the room, that could have an effect on whether the brightness of the bulb on the projector. I've had this problem myself before where I've designed a really nice map or at least I think it is with these kind of muted pastel colors, and then I take it into a classroom, and put it up, and half the contrast is gone and people can't really see the colors very well. Then, its complete failure as a map because you can't see the colors in it. So I like, "Okay, fine," and I go back and the next time I do it, I punch up those colors, increase the contrast, make them a bit darker so that maybe in that particular situation it'll be more obvious to somebody. Those wouldn't be the same colors I would use necessarily in print though. So, those conditions will make a big difference, they do matter. Viewing distance is also super important. If it's in a book, someone's going to be viewing your map from a few inches away. If it's going to be shown in a shopping mall for example, or you might have people looking at your map from a few feet away. Yes, the map will probably be larger, but you have to take that into consideration or if it's going to be say a poster at a conference, or it's going to be on a billboard or whatever it happens to be, that distance will really matter. Which reminds me of a time, not that long ago when I was in a mall that had never been in before, and I was looking around, I was hungry, I wanted a muffin. So, I found a map for the mall. Was this sort of fancy, digital, interactive map, so I thought, okay, this will help me find my muffin. Right? So I went up there, and I have to search by the type of store. I had to put in food, restaurants. A bunch of them came up, and it zoomed in, and I was trying to find the location, and it changed to display, and the map got bigger. So I'm sitting there trying to figure this out. It was not that intuitive to begin with I have to say. Then, I realized that there was a guy behind me waiting to use the map. So, to me that's actually a bad map design, is that, it's one person at a time. If you're in a mall, often they'll be say, two or three or more people, all standing. They don't know each other. Standing and trying to figure out, where's the drugstore? Where's the clothing store? Or whatever, and they can all access that information simultaneously with just a good old fashioned static map. In this case, they tried to make one that was searchable, interactive, dynamic, and you can zoom in and out. But then it becomes useful to one person at a time, and so I had to finish what I was doing so that the next person could then use that map. So, part of that is conditions of use, and that the fact that I'm standing further back, or closer to what I'm interacting with it, actually will affect whether one person can use it or more people can use it. In the end, I had to say, as much as I like technology, and I wanted to think this was a good thing it felt like it was a bit of a map fail. Yes, let's all have a little fun with our PowerPoint cliparts. You got to stick it in here once in a while, right? Have a little fun. The technical limits in terms of design controls, what we're talking about are things like, if it's going to be printed, what's the quality of the printer? The quality of the paper? The size of the output? Whether it's color versus black and white? If it's a digital display, is it going to be seen on a phone? A tablet? A desktop? A laptop? All of the above? Is it going to be a dynamic display that's adaptive? So that if somebody changes it from landscape to portrait, the map will change with it? All of these things have to be taken into consideration, and certainly with a printer, is it going to be an inkjet printer? Or a laser printer? Or an offset printer? Which vary wildly in terms of the price of the equipment, but also the price of the printing. One time I was making a map when I was consulting for a clients where it was going to be a big wall map, a big poster map. The final print one was going to cost I think it was about $3000 to print it. They we're going to get I think, I can't remember what it was for that maybe, 500 copies or a thousand copies or something. So, it was super important that I made sure there were no mistakes on that map before it got sent to the printer. It was a high-quality printer, it was being done at a publishing house. I was really excited about the fact that I was going to be able to use such a great printer, but it's definitely had an effect on the design I was using, and of course made me a little bit nervous as well. It turned okay though. They were happy with it. If your map is going to be shown on the Internet, that's the important too because it's not just the size of the display that's important, it's the size of the actual data that's being transmitted. So, if you have this big beautiful map that's whatever, 100 megabytes or something, or it's in some format that's really slow then if somebody is using this say in a location that has really slow dial-up connections, they still exist in the world or even if it's say, 3G versus LTE or whatever the latest fastest connection is for a phone, that will make a big difference. It doesn't matter how great your map is. If it's too slow for somebody to access it, they won't bother, and then you've completely failed in terms of your map design. So that is something you have to take into account.
