Lab 3 Part 3

For the last exercise of Lab 3 we were asked to add cities, states and the Mexican Capital to our map of Mexico’s River Systems.  The visual hierarchy of the map was Capital and Rivers followed by cities, and lastly the states.  We had to retain all the river labels from the previous map while adding Mexico City.  We needed to use symbology for the cities and states but not all areas needed to be labeled.  Dynamic labeling was used for the initial labeling.  I retained the river labels from the previous map and turned on the required layers one by one as defined by the maps hierarchy.  I first added the symbology for the capital city.  This caused some overlap so I converted the labels to annotation so I could tweak individually.  I kept Mexico City in the dominant position of upper right to its symbology and adjusted the surrounding river labels.  Mexico City used an Arial font with point size of 10 to show it was a cultural feature with the highest map hierarchy.  I then added the cities symbology I chose a tan color for both the symbology and labeling.  The tan draws the viewers’ attention before the states symbology but after the rivers in keeping with the map’s hierarchy.  The font was an Arial with point size of 7 to signify being cultural and in keeping with the hierarchy.  I converted the labels to annotation so that I could position individually to maximize the number displayed.  I lastly added the state symbology and labels.  I again used an Arial font to signify cultural but used all capital features to signify the political importance of these labels.  The visual hierarchy of this label was last so I used grey font slightly darker than the background color.  This downplays the labels while keeping them legible.  The dynamic labeling system was unable to display all labels especially in the busy central section of Mexico near Mexico City.  This was left unchanged due to the lower hierarchy of this layer on the map.  I added a detail map of the Mexico City but ended up removing it because it didn’t help clarify the area.  It was still pretty busy.  Created by Ray Eslinger in Nassau County Fl.