Week 2 - Intro to CartoGraphic Design with CorelDrawX7

The lab assignment

This week's lab for GIS3015 was focused on fine tuning ArcGIS created map products within CorelDrawX7. The purpose of the lab was not only to become more familiar CorelDraw, but to also learn what a graphics software program can do for a final map product.  

Our focus this week was to create a map of Florida for insertion within a children’s encyclopedia. In addition to the basic elements required for every map (e.g. a north arrow), the final maps for this week needed to include the following:

•  At least three state symbols, such as an image of the state animal
•  A unique symbol for the state capital
•  At least two cities labelled on the map, plus a change of the symbol color for the cities
•  At least one graphic style or effect created in CorelDraw, such as a drop shadow
•  A lightly colored background
•  An overall color scheme that is complementary (i.e. not too harsh on the eyes!)      

The final map, showing more than a bit of polish thanks to CorelDraw.

Technical description of my final map product

The map was designed with the idea that an older child is the intended target audience. Working under that theory I tried to keep the map content uniform and light while still being educational. To do this I decided to focus on two sub-themes: the state flower and animals, and major cities within the state.

In keeping with the educational vein I kept my fonts somewhat traditional (a mix of Times New Roman and Cambria), but played around a few of the non-technical map elements such as the title. Nearly all of the map text was created within CorelDraw – the exception was the Legend text which had been imported from ArcGIS. The map title was modified using the text properties docker. I spaced the title text far apart, and I found that I could choose to change only certain words or letters within any given text string – hence the yellow letters for the ‘sunshine’ part of my sub-title.

A drop shadow effect was created for the entire state of Florida. The picture insets were created by using the Power Clip Inside tool with an ellipse. The text around the pictures was then added with the text tool – all were created using the ‘text on a path’ technique that had been covered in the lab. In working with the picture text I found that it was automatically grouped with my image, so everything moved together when I wanted to adjust the position of the images… pretty neat, right? 

Personal thoughts on the lab exercise

I found this lab exercise to be deceptively simple… I’ve worked with both ArcGIS and CorelDraw before, but not necessarily in tandem with the same map, and admittedly my CorelDraw experience had been limited to sprucing up hand drawn sketch maps, not necessarily anything too complicated. There were some initial snafu’s with importing the point symbols from ArcGIS that took me hours to resolve. While working in CorelDraw I found that one really needs to have a workflow plan of action, otherwise things get crazy frustrating (such as realizing that I needed to move and resize the Florida… but I had already locked down my Legend box with the map scale!). To top it all off CorelDraw kept crashing on me – luckily I saved early and often!

In the end I spent a lot of time on this lab – but despite the time setbacks it was worth it. If I hadn’t encountered all the above issues, I wouldn’t have learned half as much about CorelDraw – or about critically thinking about how to best put together map.