Our assignment this week was to take a rather jumbled map and rearrange it in a manner that follows map composition principles and will best communicate the desired information to the user. To do this, I primarily relied on the principles of screening and visual weight. The most important element is the weighted coloring of the counties. These fill most of the available space and utilized a sequential color scheme that intuitively communicates "higher" population percentages with darkening colors. The title also has a high visual weight and cements the contract with the user of what we are trying to get across. The legend also takes a prominent position as it is needed to interpret the counties in more detail.
All the other items on the map (the insets, scale bar, north arrow, author, date, data source) are supplemental and would detract from the main message. To minimize their visual impact, these elements have been set to 40% gray and place in less prominent positions on the page. Also, any color was removed from the inset maps except for the rectangles that show the area of interest.
The double inset created a bit of a dilemma, as I'd not seen many maps that utilized two insets. I ended up placing the USA inset first and furthest from the counties. Then, I placed the Florida inset map between the USA and county maps. This seems to provide a visual hierarchy of sorts and a linear progression. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the outcome and look forward to seeing how other students tackled this problem.
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