Own Your Map!

Here is my submission for the "Own Your Map" lab.   I consider myself "creative" but not necessarily "artistic", so I will probably struggle with good color schemes during these courses.  But I guess we have to start somewhere.   My "extra" features I added to this map were:
1. Identify the Capital of Florida with a star
2. Experiment with the background linear gradient to use blue instead of yellow and set it at an angle.

Here is the Process I used:

1.       Copied the OwnYourMap zip file from the R: drive over to the S: drive

2.       Extracted the data to the S:\OwnYourData directory

3.       Started ArcCatalog 10

4.       Found my project in S:\OwnYourMap

5.       Clicked the + button to see contents

6.       Looked at the three tabs (Content, Preview, and Description)

7.       I actually found it easier to find the information about the Metadata answers by doing a “Properties” on the layer of the MXD instead of looking at it in ArcCatalog.

8.       For the Time Period Data is Relevant I look at the attribute table for the Cities to get the 6/13/2007 value.  ** Note: I then modified this information after reading through step 7 and watching the video that Tanya provided.

9.       I struggled with knowing exactly what to do on this step and looked at the Discussion forum and saw that Tanya is going to post a video to clarify this step.

10.   I opened the OwnYourMap.mxd from my S: drive

11.   I did a “Save As” to save the map as OwnYourMap_DRJ.mxd

12.   I opened up Layout View

13.   I set my page settings

14.   I inserted the NEATLINE as prompted.   I hadn’t heard of this feature before.  Very helpful !

15.   I right clicked the data frame and then selected the Properties and the Size and Position Tab.  I initially tried to put the size as 7.5 x 10 but then realized since it was landscape rather than portrait, it needed to be 10 x 7.5

16.   I did the 3 alignment tasks (to Margin, to Center, to vertical center)

17.   I used the Full Extent button to zoom to the data.

18.   I inserted the title and played around with the font choices before setting on Arial Bold 24 in Black (I might change this after working on the map some more)

19.   I saved all my work throughout this lab

20.   I made sure to send the neatline object to the back

21.   I added the legend and then took the steps to ensure that the County Boundaries and Cities show up properly in the legend.

22.   I modified the properties of the legend boundary.   I haven’t set the fill yet until I see what else we will do style-wise in this lab

23.   I added a North Arrow as instructed.

24.   I added the scale bar (it was already in Miles), and stretched it so that the increments shown on it were 50,100, and 200

25.   I changed the “frequency” on the scale bar to “divisions” so now it just shows 0,100,200

26.   Now I spend about an hour just playing with the various features.   I wanted to try to be creative (even though I am not “artistic” when it comes to things like color scheme and such).  I tried to make a creative background that used the linear shading without that yellow color (Thanks Google).   I tried to use interesting fonts.   I learned how to differentiate Tallahassee as the Capital city and give it a gold star.   One thing I tried but was unsuccessful with was giving each county its own color.   I was able to do that, but it would REALLY impact my legend.  It would try to show the name of every county rather than just the title.   So that is something I hope to learn in future coursework. 

27.   I exported the JPG as requested.  Now will go back and research more about the metadata.

28.   I watched the video that Tanya provided which was VERY helpful.