This was our first map in the sequence in Graphic Design I. Our requirement was to create a map that can be used in a direction aspect. With an interest in being outdoors and staying active, I chose to do mine on the Hiking Areas located in Austin. First, I had to create a list of the most popular hiking areas in the city of Austin. I categorized the trails by their level of difficult and their lengths. Then, I created the zone of Austin in illustrator. I had to locate where each of the hiking trails were located and plot them on the map. I knew I had two different categories that would be presented for each location (level of difficulty and length). My goal was to make symbols and colorization that wouldn’t make the user be drawn to a particular one. I wanted them all to look equally appealing. I wanted the map to be clear and concise, and easy to use.
Overall I learned a lot from this project. Hierarchy/unity, legibility, creativity, and craft were my five main goals to completing this project. At first the idea of creating my very own map was intimidating but I think that through critic and open studio the project was fairly easy for me to complete. I think starting off with this map was helpful in creating the next two we were assigned. The hardest part of the project I found was just figuring out how to represent the hiking trails in a unique way, but also making each one have an equal amount of appeal to the user. At first I started out by using rectangles to depicts the size of each trail, but after critic learned that this wasn’t the strongest way to represent them because naturally, the users eyes were drawn to the larger rectangles.
From this first project I learned how to depict useful information into a graphic form and how to incorporate the five elements we frequently discussed in class to my map.