Proportional circle map

I chose Europe Albers Equal Area Conic for my projection. I used a 65% opacity, but chose not to use that in my legend, I didn't like the look of the opacity in the legend but felt I needed it in order to see the country outlines and see the names. I hope that is not one of the 'important things not to do on your map'! I chose to make my legend linear with a horizontal orientation, and went from smaller to larger symbols because to me, it is the most logical way to read the legend.

Percentage change by Division

Again with this map, I feel there are obvious holes in the map space and I feel a horizontal legend would've been better suited and given the map a more even flow. Something to remember for next lab I guess!

Percentage change by state

After trying several options, I chose to go with North American Albers Equal Area Conic for my projection. I felt since we were looking at Alaska, along with the contiguous states, a N. American projection would be better suited than a Canadian or Alaska projection. I also wanted to preserve area, so the other N. American projections did not seem like good choices to me. I decided to modify my natural breaks manually to make them more equal and I also liked the idea of making them whole numbers, I felt it made them easier to read. Looking back now, I wish I had used a horizontal legend, there are some open spaces on my map that I'm unhappy with, and I feel like I could've centered the map elements better with a different legend layout. Unfortunately time just doesn't permit. I have learned a lot in Illustrator so far and I like the effects that it allows you to add to your map features.

Map Lettering Lab

Map Compostition Lab

Data Classification

I chose equal interval as the best choice for this lab, because the breakdown in percentages is more evenly divided.

Bad map

Okay, so this map was just plain funny to me when I saw it! According to the title (which isn't shown here) it is supposed to show all category 1 to 5 hurricanes whose centers have passed within 10 nautical miles of the state of Florida's boundary during the period of 1851 to 2005, but good luck making any sense out of it. First, while the map does appear to achieve it's goal to show storms within the 10 nautical miles of FL's boundary, although we cannot be sure without something to identify scale and also better use of symbology to show said 10 nautical mile area, the only real label anywhere on the map is for the entire state of FL. So if you were interested in how close any of these storms were in relation to say, the Tampa Bay area, if you were unfamiliar with FL, you would have no idea where to look. Second, while it is somewhat easy to distinguish what each line represents in the legend, it is much more difficult to determine this on the actual map due to the fact that the lines intersect and overlap so much. Also, one thing important to note is the fact that the title fails to mention that this map is not only tracking category 1-5 hurricanes, but it is also tracking other tropical and subtropical weather phenomena such as, depressions, waves, and storms.

One possible better way to represent this data, would be to break it down into 10, or possibly even 25 year intervals. Then break that down further into each tropical storm/hurricane category using a variation of different line colors and symbols. It would also be helpful to add labels for major populated areas in the state of FL, to better determine the location of these storms.