Styling Justifications
To improve the National Park Service maps, I created a few simple color changes.
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To decrease the prevalence of green as a base color in and around the parks, I...
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converted national forests from a light green color (representing the leaves of the trees) to a
light brown color (representing the trunks and branches of the trees).
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made the same conversion on the Appalachian Trail.
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recolored the park itself to a mild pink color. This color is not often found in nature and
indicates that attention should be drawn to this region of the map, and this is the subject of the
map, so this is an appropriate indication.
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To more closely align with common road maps and atlases, I...
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converted the primary roads to a red color.
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separated secondary roads and dirt roads into thin black lines and thin gray lines to emphasize
their lesser importance to navigation.
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I recolored the Cherokee Indian Reservation to match the other populated areas in the map and to have a
non-orange color that clashes less with the new road styling.
I also created a number of changes to the iconography of the map to add texture and improve its overall focus.
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The mountain peaks on the map are shown just as dots with labels on the park map. However, with all the
types of items on the map, and with nondescript peak names like “Spence Field” included, it helps the clarity
and visual appeal of the map to convert the points into mountain-like icons.
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The visitor centers are shown just as dots with labels on the park map. Given the utility of a visitor center
to a new user for getting information about the park, finding these points quickly is important. Therefore,
I gave each visitor center an “information” icon to help it stand out in the map.
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I changed the style of the highway labels. Although navigation to and from a national park is important, it's
not the focus of the map, so the highway labels should be relatively minimal. The park map, as it stands, labels
state highways and federal highways with particular shield types and gives multiple names for many roads which
are governed by multiple authorities. I kept these roads in my map but labeled only the federal highways (since
the park system is a federal system and these are the most important roads). I also updated the styling of the
labels from complex shield shapes to simple squares to reduce the focus on the road systems outside the park.
To improve the labeling in the map, I worked to reduce the overall label density and improve readability. I eliminated...
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the elevations of the highest peaks.
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some of the road labels within the park.
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state boundaries.
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minor city, navigation, and physical feature labels outside the park.