Achieving good design

A key stage in developing a good design is the compilation process. Many cartographers still sketch out a layout on paper before starting, but others prefer to sketch digitally, which is essentially what you're doing in this chapter. In the compilation sheet, you'll add placeholders for the parts of your map to create a digital sketch, and determine size and placement to achieve balance, harmony, and unity.

Since few geographic features are symmetrical, we can't just drop it in the center of the page and consider it done. Even if the map is bounded into a nice square by a neatline, the shape of the subject area is still going to impact how it's placed within that space, and perhaps whether other map elements go on top of that square, or outside of it.

Let's start by looking at some of the ways in which balance is established (or disturbed) by the component parts of our map. Visual balance is affected by the relative weight of the symbols, and the location of the elements with respect to each other and the visual center of the map. The Visual Center of the page is where our eyes are drawn first, and is different than the actual, or Geometric Center. If you were to draw lines connecting the corners of the page, these lines would intersect at the geometric center. The visual center is about 5% beyond that, so it varies depending on the size and orientation of your page as shown in the following figure:

Not only do our eyes gravitate to a point slightly over the geometric center, but they also travel around the page in very specific ways. For those of us who read predominantly in languages written left to right, our eyes have developed a natural tendency to scan a page from the upper-left to the lower-right. While reading, we scan in a Z motion, across a line, down to the start of the next, and so forth. If the page is not covered in words, but rather in graphics, as with a map, we tend to shortcut that Z shape and take a more direct diagonal from upper-left to lower-right. However, our eyes will hang up on that visual center, the Focus, resulting in an imperfect vector across the page. The area around that is called the Field, and our eyes will take in that information as our attention is caught by the focus. The Fringe is everything else, and as our eyes leave the center, they will continue to dip to the lower-right corner as shown in the following figure. However, if there happens to be something in the upper-right corner that looks interesting, we will detour from that path:

In designing the map page, we want to work with this natural focus of attention—where our eyes settle first, and how they move naturally across a page. The key focus of the map needs to be at the visual center, and the upper-right corner should be low on distractions.

Let's take a look at our counties map from the Chapter 2, Getting Started in ArcGIS Pro. Since this is a compilation sheet and not a final map, we can use placeholders for the other elements that will go in this map. In this example, as seen in the following figure, map elements are tucked around the edges of the map, as they should be, but with no clear sense of organization. Our eyes are bouncing around looking at all the map elements, with no real reward, getting pulled away from the main message:

Did you get sucked into spending time in the upper-right corner? That's not what we want. Now, look at what happens when we declutter that space, line things up a bit, and bring the title into more prominence:

The eye is not drawn to the upper-right; it hovers around the center of the map, and can then drop-down through natural movement to find the rest of the elements. It is more balanced, resting on a stable base of elements, and it's easier for the eye to spend time in the main part of the map without getting distracted.