Own Your Map - Week 2

This was week two of delving into ArcMap. In the past I had to create map graphics with larger/smaller map call-outs and it was always difficult to find maps that matched or worked well together. Now I can design my own! Our project this week was to create a graphic displaying the location of the University of West Florida campus in relation to Escambia County, FL.

I’m not a graphic designer at this point so the colors and spacing can still use a little work but I was really excited to figure out how to display multiple data frames at one time. It was even more interesting to see how it was possible to edit multiple map frames while they were all displayed in Layout View. I got a little frustrated with zooming and accidentally moving the wrong items but overall this week was not too difficult.

To top it off I was so excited about making my own call-outs I showed one of my friends who works in land acquisition. Her first comment was did you have to draw all those borders yourself? I showed her the shapefiles we were working with and she could not believe how easy it was to manipulate and display them. She used to spend hours drawing map graphics in Adobe Illustrator and was a little jealous of the functions in ArcMap. I'm looking forward to our next project.