Cartographic Skills: Typography

Good day everyone,
        This post is in regard to this weeks Cartography assignment with lab exercise on Typography. Typography is the art or process of specifying, arranging, and designing type. This assignment included the below overall learning objectives:

•  Demonstrate general typographic guidelines when making a map

• Employ proper type placement for different feature types (point, line, area)

The lab to facilitate these objectives gave me a mapped area of Marathon Florida, sans labels. With this area I then had to employ the various tenants and practices associated with good typography to effectively label 17 different specific areas/items.

There are many different considerations to take into account when labeling items on a map. A rough outline of some of the key decision's is below:

    These come after you know you need a label, and have placed a label, and added the text to the label.

1.    Determine Font 
•   Serifed vs non serifed, does the text font match the other fonts being employed for its symbol type or mesh with your theme overall? 
•   Color also goes with your theme and visual hierarchy. 
•         Should it be less noticeable as base information, or stand out brightly as thematic information? 
2.    Adjust Size 
•   Reference your visual hierarchy for text size determination. 
•   Larger fonts down to smaller fonts in rough order of Title, Legend, key symbology, base information,  name/date/source data etc. 
3.    Adjust placement 
•   This is heavily influenced by type of object being labeled. 
• Point: get the label as close to the area without overlap as necessary following the Text book guidelines (Figure 11.24, pg 206 Thematic Cartography…) 

•  Line: Refer to the above table, but try and keep the text above or parallel to the line, without going upside down. 

•   Area: Can the text fit into the area feature, or need to go close by? 

•  Add call out or leader line as necessary to avoid confusion. 

Here is my completed map of Marathon Florida with Marathon layout provided by UWF and edited by me exclusively in Corel Draw x7:

Since this lab was in reference to typography ill start there. I have employed one font, Cambria Normal throughout, with the exception of different water features labels being italicized. However with this font, varying sizes, outline colors, and positioning have been employed. Also, all of the Keys have utilized a leader line to subtly emphasize the area they belong to.
With this background, I wanted two things. First, a realistic water body for the island of Marathon to rest on, as well as a sense of the water and figure being up closer to you on the lower portion of the image, with the distance falling away as you continue higher along the map. This background picture, compliments of Google images, is from Destin Florida.
My map key: I also personalized the map key to be another element of florida by portraying a segment of grassy sand dune. The white sandy portion provided a good location for my symbology elements. Additionally, since the theme of this map is largely in part the Florida Keys, I utilized a drawing of a key (key being another suitable term in place of legend).
One last added touch: I had left a white border around the map to facilitate the feeling of having a horizon at the top of the picture to better facilitate figure ground with the water.
Thank you for your time.