A Look at Maps

Krysta Brown
Infographics 4150
Maps Assignment

1. One map I saw appeared in a Columbia Missourian article on Feb. 17, and it talks about the city council’s proposal to set up late-night taxi stands. The graphic is trying to show the areas of downtown where the stands would be located, and which zones would be off-limits, in the council’s effort to control where the cab drivers can park and when they can accept passengers.
The strength of this map is its simplicity—it is fairly easy to tell where the lines are drawn against cabbies, so to speak. It gets the message across. But in terms of eye-catching appeal, it is not the most visually appealing. I think this may be because of the bold red line and simple red dots for the taxi stands. To make it more interesting, I think the designer could have been a little more creative, maybe by putting yellow cars instead of red dots and putting in simple graphics of well-known downtown landmarks, like the Tiger Hotel or whatever is on Ninth Street to allow viewers to get their bearings in a more engaging way. Also, this graphic could not stand alone but would be better paired with an article explaining the story.


http://www.columbiamissourian.com/multimedia/graphic/2011/02/17/city-council-considers-late-night-taxi-stands/


2. Another blog called “Medical Marijuana by State” is a simple colored map of the U.S., with varying shades of green for the states used to connote the degrees of leniency and tolerance that state has regarding medicinal marijuana based on policies and laws passed. To provide additional context, the caption reads: “The dark green represents states that allow medicinal marijuana. Light green represents states with marijuana-friendly laws or pending legislation. Alaska and Hawaii (not pictured) allow medicinal marijuana.” The graphic includes a sidebar of medicinal benefits it says the plant has been proven to possess, as well as a click-through gallery of state-by-state legislation/policies, which definitely provides a clear indication of the locations the map is showing.



http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20345389_1,00.html

3. I really like this map that ran in the San Diego Union Tribune. It shows a very detailed, organized, clean map of where an air show of about 200 Navy planes from over the various eras will be flying over the San Diego Bay and the Naval Air Station for a signature air show. The map shows the direct course the planes will take, and includes several explanatory paragraphs that enable it to stand alone, though the Tribune did have an accompanying story.


http://apple.copydesk.org/uploads/2011/02/1102SanDiegoAir12.jpg

4. Likewise, this map, though slightly dated, comes from some of the world’s best in graphic design, The New York Times. It is from May of 2010 and it shows a colored map of the U.S.—divided into counties—and shaded with varying degrees of reddish-orange to show the highest rates of unemployment and the percentage change over the course of a year. In addition, it is also a roll-over graphic that lets you see each individual county’s rate and percentage change. Boone County’s was 6.7 percent, down 0.5 percent from the previous year and less than the national average of 9.6 percent. Strengths: visually appealing, detailed, not too cluttered, maximum information in short amount of time, interactive and engaging. Weaknesses: this graphic still probably couldn’t stand on its own, simply because it requires more context to explain the impact of the recession.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/03/us/20090303_LEONHARDT.html

5. Another amazingly interactive map on The Guardian’s website shows all the earthquake activity around the world and is updated live. It shows a map of the world in panoramic view and allows you to click on an area to zoom in and get more information about the earthquakes there.For example, if you click on the North America region and zoom to the circle showing activity in the Missouri/Arkansas area, you will see that Arkansas has had 3 earthquakes/seismic activity occurrences in the past two weeks. It’s easy, illustrative, and once again engaging viewers in learning information that is most relevant to them.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/feb/22/earthquake-map-world

A Look at Charts

1. One of the graphics I found appeared in the New York Times online. The graphic accompanied an article about companies reacting to rising commodity costs by raising prices on basic consumer goods, from lunchmeat to shoes. The graph was actually a set of three fairly simple fever charts depicting the rising costs of cotton, copper and corn since 2005. The data on the chart clearly show a spike in costs in 2011. The graphic’s other strengths include its simplicity, its legibility — as in, no extraneous figures or lines cluttering the view of the data — and its consistency between the 3 graphs charting different commodities. I thought that style tied the information in together and allowed readers to be able to immediately tell that the price of those goods had spiked, whether or not they read the article. That said, it’s still not the most exciting or eye-catching graphic, and it might have a hard time catching someone’s eye if they did not already have an interest in the topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/02/14/business/0214-prices-gfx.html?ref=business



2. I really liked a chart in the Missourian called “Battle of the Sexes” because it was an entertaining, creative way to illustrate the relationships between the team members on the men and women’s teams and their coaches. The strengths include the creativity and interesting topic, as well as a visually appealing design using just half of each player’s face and a vertical alignment of that player’s response to each question. Weakness: I think it would have made more sense to place Coach Pingeton’s face on the far right side, since Coach Zimmerman’s was on the far left.
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/multimedia/graphic/2011/02/11/tiger-tipoff-battle-sexes/



3. This chart from shows the stock prices for CBOE Holdings Inc. for the past eight months. Strengths: it is immediately visible what the article wants you to see: that the stock prices plummeted last year, then evened out somewhat and now have risen 5.3 percent in the last month. Weaknesses: based on the headline, if you are unfamiliar with stock market jargon, you would be lost in the headline alone. Also, for one unfamiliar with stocks, it is unclear what the price range is for the closing figures until you read the article and see that it is in millions of dollars.
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=178228


4. This chart appeared in the Columbia Tribune. It’s a fairly basic chart showing the hierarchical structure of the Columbia Police Department. Its purpose was to illustrate the changes in the chain of command that are happening under the new system as it is being reconstructed. It was part of the article “Reorganizing the Law.” The weakness for this graphic are that it is unable to stand alone; it does not make sense to someone unless they also read the article.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/photos/2011/feb/13/24264/


5. This graphic appeared in a blog about the Hudson Bay ice coverage and how it has been affected in recent years by certain environmental factors, and whether these trends have been incorrectly attributed to El Nino and La Nina in the media. The weaknesses of the graph are that it’s not easy to pick up on what it is talking about if it were standing alone; even after reading the article, it was difficult for me to understand what was being shown, since it looked as though the end result was the same in all of the data trends. Upon second glance, however, I realized that what I was seeing is the amount of ice coverage being much less at the beginning of the winter months for each subsequent year.

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110202_Figure4.png