The Use of Gestalt's Principles!

 Here I share with you the result of my map from Lab 3 Cartographic Design. In this lab we were tasked with creating a map of public schools in Ward 7 of Washington D.C. In the process of creating this map we were tasked with using the Gestalt's Principles of Visual Hierarchy. We needed to focus on Contrast, Figure Ground, and Balance. 

Gestalt's Principles are all about flow and balance. When first looking upon the map your eyes should be directed to the higher levels of visual Hierarchies, such as the symbology and titles and then move on to the lower levels with reaching the lowest levels at the end such as the scale bar, data source and author. While still keeping everything connected. Making sure to bring color balance and balance to orientation so there is no disconnect. There should be a clear understanding of what the purpose of the map is and what the main features are.

This map is my final outcome of using Gestalt's Principles. I used ArcGIS Pro to create my map. I spent a good amount of time making sure the main features were indeed the main focus point. For Ward 7 I chose a lighter brighter color than its surrounding area of the map of Washington D.C. I used the color editor to get the shading to the exact color I felt represented the most balance while making Ward 7 the focal area. For the symbology of the schools which are point features I made sure they could be easily differentiated using different size symbols and colors for the different school levels using unique values, facuse field in the symbology tool. I used the graphic and text tab when creating my titles. I spent time finding the most balance placement for the titles and added a shadow to create a slight 3D effect drawing your eye to them. I customized my scale ratio using the scale bar so I could zoom in to the focus area while not cutting anything off to cover as much white space as possible on my map layout. I played around a good bit with finding the best placements of all the map elements on the layout while keeping true to the Gestalt's Principles.