When we're learning about map design, it's important to know about map elements. Those are basically the building blocks of the typical things that you would see in the map. So, here's a list of map elements, more or less in the order that they would be applied to a map when you're creating it. So, I'll go through each of these. I'll show you an example of a map so that it's clear what these things mean, but essentially, you're starting with a Frame Line that goes around the entire map, then you put the mapped area on next, then the Title and Subtitle, Legend, scale, and so on. So, part of this is that you're doing it based on the size of the things. So literally, the Frame Line goes around everything else in the map, so it's the biggest things. So, it's going to contain everything so put that on first, then the Mapped Area which is the next biggest thing. Then the title and a subtitle which is more to do with importance, and then the Legend and scale which are of decreasing importance. So, it's a good guideline. It's not that I can tell or someone else could tell necessarily what order you put them on, but it'll increase the efficiency of your map design if you start with the big things, and then work your way down to the smaller things, and then you can find places to put them. So, let's just have a look at a map that shows us what those things are. Okay, here's our map with our map elements. The first thing is the Frame Line, so that's a line that goes around everything else on the map. You can think of it like a picture frame if you want, that's for some reason always comes to mind when I'm thinking about it. You'll notice that everything else is included. For some reason, some people want to put their name or some other information outside the Frame Line, that's not really the idea. The whole idea is that, it's containing everything else. So, put everything else inside that Frame Line. The Neatline is the line that contains the actual mapped area. So, I'll just put that on here now as well. The mapped area just means literally, the main subject of your map. The Neatline is the line that goes around that area. So, you don't always necessarily have a Neatline. For example, if I didn't have Lake Ontario, if that wasn't there and this wasn't there, and if I just had Toronto floating on its own, with white space around it, you wouldn't necessarily have to have a Neatline. In fact, that might detract from it if you had it. But when you have your mapped area that goes right up to the edge of the rectangle, then it's important to have a Neatline, because it does tidy things up and makes it neater. So, if you're trying to remember the difference, the Frame Line is like a picture frame around everything. The Neatline keeps things neat and tidy, if that works for you. Then you add your Title and Subtitle. Just a tip here, it's a rookie mistake that people often make is that they'll make their title, Map of City of Toronto, blah blah blah. You don't have to put the Map all in there, it's redundant. You wouldn't write a book and then title it like book of such and such. So, it's normal you wouldn't do that, maybe it's a book of spells or something I don't know. So, the idea is that, you don't need to put Map of it in there, but for some reason when people start out, they really want to put that in there. So, don't do that. What you should focus on in the title is the usual things, who, what, when, where, and why. Not all of those things all the time but here, it's obvious that it's the City of Toronto. We're talking about population density, what are those areas that we're looking at, their census tracks, when was the data collected in 2016. So, that's just nice and simple, and clear in the title. I've used a subtitle here to add a little extra information, instead of trying to fit it all into the title. So, you can work with those things. You can add the Legend. There's a few things here that I could mention. So, by default the software wants to put in a title for the Legend that says Legend, that often is not necessary. A map like this which is really a thematic map, it's pretty straightforward, it's pretty simple, it's clear from the title that we're talking about population density. So, you don't really need to tell people that this box here is a Legend. I think that's fairly obvious. If you have a reference map, if there's a whole bunch of stuff in that Legend, then sure fine, it makes sense to put that in there. It's not like it's a horrible mistake, it's just kind of redundant in a map like this, you don't really need it. What would be better is to change that title to something more informative like here, I put people per square kilometer. So, the title tells us that it's population density, so I didn't really need to put that in the Legend title as well, but I did put in people per square kilometer, so that people know if map readers know what those numbers are referring to. Then actually, I even put in by quantiles so that it's clear how I divided up the data into these different groups or classes, okay? What else? If I did not have Lake Ontario here. If this was just white space, and the Legend was white as well, then you don't really need to put a box around the Legend. Often again that's something that's done by default or people feel like there should be a box around it. The box is only there to differentiate or separate the Legend from something around it. So, in this case, where it's a different color than the background, I didn't really want to make the Legend blue like the water because then it looks like it's floating in the water that's no good. So, in this case, I put a box around it because I want to make it very clear. Not only that, I actually made the color of the box line similar to the color of the water. So, it kind of blends in but it's a little bit darker so there's a differentiation there. I thought that was just a nice subtle touch. It's important to include other things that are on the map. So, the fact that these are census tracks outside the study area, just so people know what they are. One thing that I kind of wrestle with a bit is that, part of me wants to say that anything that's on your map should be in the Legend. But you'll notice here that I didn't put water in the Legend. There's no box here that says water, right? I think in this case, because I've labeled it Lake Ontario, because it's Toronto and I think most people would know what's on the Great Lakes, I don't think it's really necessary to put water on there. I hesitate only that when you're starting out, it's important to have a good practice to include all the information you think is important. But if there's a point where you think that something is really obvious, if it's a road map, and you put roads, it says road map of such and such and you've got a few lines on the map. Maybe you don't need to put something in it that says roads because maybe it's obvious. So, some of that is a bit subjective, open to a bit of interpretation. You don't necessarily have to have everything on there, but generally you may want to err on the side of caution and include things if you're not sure. You should include a scale on your map. Here I've gone for one that's fairly simple and straightforward. I find that people tend to want to put some more elaborate scales in there, but there's not really a need for it, especially a map like this that's meant to be really straightforward, kind of technical maybe, something you might see in a city website or something like that. Just keep it straightforward. The units that you use will depend on where you are, and who you are. In Canada we use the metric system so it's in kilometers. If you're working in United States perhaps you would use miles. Orientation just refers to having a north arrow. Something that's funny that comes up from time to time is that some people really feel strongly that the north arrow must always points straight up. Especially, I think when you're new to map making it's like wait a minute. The map arrows pointing straight up that's wrong, and it's not wrong it all depends on the map and the situation for example here in Toronto. The street network in the city really is tilted to one side, and so if I was to make a map with north straight up, then I would have to make the city a bit smaller in order to fit it onto a page. So, if I just rotate it a few degrees as much as you can see here in terms of the orientation of that north arrow, then I can make the area that I'm mapping larger and fit a little more detail into it on the same size page. So, don't feel as though it must always be pointing directly north. You can adjust it if makes sense to do so,if you have a good reason to do it. In this case it's not too far off north I think it's pretty obvious to people how this map works and where it is and so on. If you're radically off north, if you've rotated the map say 180 degrees or something that's okay to, there may be a good reason for that but it should be for a specific purpose and definitely then you want to make sure that there's some north arrow or some way of indicating to people, the north isn't where they expect it to be. Sometimes that could be a useful effect to get people's attention. But you should do it intentionally and make sure it's clear to people what it is that they're looking at. Make sure that you include the data source and authorship. So,the data source is Where did you get the data from, that's included on the map and it's important for people to be able to judge the quality of the data and of the map. If you have an authoritative source like I have here which is, Statistics Canada, a government agency, I think most people would trust that data and say that's pretty good data then therefore this is something I can rely on. If the data source was my uncle Bob who doesn't work for Statistics Canada or whatever, I'm just making it up. If it's some source where it's not really that authoritative. It's important that people know that it's not to say that it's automatically a bad map but they want to be able to judge it based on where that data came from. So, do included it. The format of the way that it's written can vary depending on the map. I'm using a fairly simple straightforward format here. You can use a formal citation method just like you would like if you were referencing a journal article or something like that. That depends a bit on who you're making them out for, whether it's going to be published. Are there standards that are expected for a particular type of map. So, keep those in mind but definitely make sure to include the map data source on there, so that people can judge that map data accordingly. Of course include your authorship, your name so that people know who made this map. So, that they can give you the applause and attention that you so well-deserved for your wonderful map. This may seem like a really small detail but it's super important to always remember to align the map elements the objects that are in your map layout. I'm not talking about moving the actual locations of cities running like that, I'm just saying the legend, and the scale bar and the title and all those things whenever you can try to get them to line up correctly. Your brain is incredibly good at detecting even small variations where things are just a little bit out of alignment and it's something that's distracting. It makes your map look less polished, less finished and you don't want to have that. I spent an enormous amount of time when I'm making my PowerPoint slides for example, making sure that things are all aligned, centered to whatever way is best so that they look really polished and complete and I think it's important that, it only takes a few extra seconds in the software, to right-click on something and say align to margins, align this object to that object. So, I'm just trying to emphasize that attention detail I think is rewarded in a map that just looks so much better. There's really not a lot to this you have no alignment here you can align to the bottom, to the center, to the top. It all depends on what it is that you're trying to do the look that you're going for. You can also align things vertically by left center right, there's not necessarily one hard and fast rule that will always work for everything, sometimes you have to take into consideration the shape or the size of different objects or the location of them what it is you're trying to achieve. But the main point really am trying to get across here is that you do think about it. You do try to notice these things and apply these alignments whenever you can. This may seem super pedantic but it's something that I really think is important to just pay attention to these little details, it just takes like two seconds to fix and it makes your map look better, and it's just more correct and more rigorous. So, I'm just going to point this so quickly is from a great blog post from Ezri and was written by Eileen Buckley in 2016 and she's just pointing out here common error that people make with GIS data. So, what happens is you get a data-set say for roads. Okay, and so the name of the file is roads, you added into your map and then the software helpfully automatically puts the legend entry as being the same name, as the file name which is roads. Okay, what could be wrong with that? Because a legend is actually meant to show you an example of the thing on the map and so if you have say a red line in your legend that indicates a road and you've put roads there it's not more than one road in the legend. Okay, you've shown one example of a road in the legend and so that is a road. No s on the end. Okay, you're not saying here's all the roads on my map you're saying, here's an example of a road. So, the text, the label that's included for that should be singular not plural. Okay. It's again I know it sounds really pedantic maybe it is but why not just do it correctly and it's a common thing because I find a lot of data-sets are plural because people are saying well this data-set contains all the roads which is fine. But when you're creating your legend makes sure that it's singular. Unless there is a good reason to do it otherwise. If for example your legend entry has more than one thing, whether it's picnic tables. If you have three tables in the symbol, then you can say tables because that's plural. So, I don't want to belabor the point too much but it's again one of these little details that I notice on a well-designed map, versus one that maybe is not as well designed as these little technical details are nit-picky things. Now that you know about it hopefully you'll avoid those little mistakes along the way.
