Map of schools in Ward 7, Washington DC

For this weeks lab, I made a map of Ward 7 in Washington DC. The purpose of this map is to convey the locations and type of schools within the area. The design process focused heavily on using Visual Hierarchy, balance, contrast, and some of the Gestalt Principals.

I tried to use subtle colors for everything, and even subtler for the features at the bottom of the Visual Hierarchy. I felt that the rose color for Ward 7 and the sand color for DC were a good match. Green and blue for the parks and water were a natural fit. I differentiated the different school types by using color coded small to large schoolhouse symbols.

Managing the empty space was a challenge. The map is in such a odd shape with diamond shaped DC jutting onto the page. I was able to mitigate some of that with my legend and vicinity map. It still feels a little bit off, but I am not entirely sure how to fix it. I think that incorporating a faded Maryland state could fill in some of the space.

While this was all done on ArcGIS, it would be fun to tool around with the map in CorelDraw.