Wine Consumption in Europe - Proportional Circle

This was a project I could tip my wine glass to. Love Wine! I am continuing to gain control of Adobe Illustrator but still lacked several skills to achieve what I wanted on this map. My skills with Excel have also improved allowing me to work quickly through the calculations. Data for Germany was missing from the spreadsheet so I went to the Wine Institute web site. The data didn't match up exactly with what was provided but it was close enough for this type of product. I also discovered the consumption was based on hectoliter (000). I searched on-line for a quick conversion and learned the French drink nearly a billion gallons of wine per year. 

 I used the suggested Europe Lambert Conformal projection.  I selected a color ramp for the countries from ArcMap to go with my red wine theme and only made a few modifications in Ai.  I lost a neat line somewhere within my layers.  I will definately spend more time on organizing layers as suggested.  I am having issues with controlling the area surrounding my map when I export a file.  The white border around my neatline is often uneven.

Population Change in the US by Census Division

This map was created in Adobe Illustrator from a copy of the Population change by state map.  I had selected a gray scale from the swatches layers in AI before I read the instruction about using the edit color command and choosing gray scale.  The way I used the gray scale was more difficult but had the same end result. I chose to label the divisions to clarify the four divisions from North Central to New England.

The challenge for this project was manipulating the data for the percentage of change and class breaks in Excel.  It wasn't difficult just very time consuming creating the Census Divisions from the list of states.  The data is broken down using equal interval classes.  Equal interval is a poor choice for this data because it leaves one interval class unused and lumps four other division that are colocated into one class.  I wasn't sure how much liberty to take on decimal points in the percentages.  I wanted to use two decimal points but would have ended up with a duplicate to and from number so I ended up with two and three decimal points.

I learned from the reading to not have any spaces between the color blocks in the legend.  I'm curious if ArcMap gives that option in the legend styles.

Choropleth Map of Population Change by State

This is a choropleth map depicting the population change in the US by state based on 1990 and 2000 Census data.  Most of the work was done in ArcMap then the file was exported to Adobe Illustrator for some finishing touches.  The CONUS map was created using WGS 84 projection.  I created a new data frame for Alaska and used NAD 83 Alaska Albers projection to get a better shaped feature. 

The data is broken down using natural breaks.  Is it "Viva Las Vegas" that is causing the population boom in Nevada?  I'm still experimenting with exporting/importing my final image.  I tried to follow Jennifer Slye's suggestion of using Picasso but haven't figured out how to copy the html data.

I'm slowly getting the hang of Adobe Illustrator and was able to create some lead lines for my state labels.  I really like the color options with AI.

Hispanic Population in Southern Florida

This map was created with Adobe Illustrator.  This was a challenging project to balance the three shapes on the page while placing the emphasis on the chorpleth map of Southern Florida.  My lack of skill with AI is still keeping me from achieving a final product for which I am satisfied.  I am staying positive as I am seeing the possibilites with this program.  I chose complimentary colors for the USA map and highlighted section of the Florida map.  I'm hoping there is no confusion with similar colors used in the legend.

 As I was recoloring the various counties I noticed some white gaps between some of the counties.  I would correct this with topology rules in ArcGIS.  I am not sure the easiest way to fix those in AI.

Florida Keys - Labeled with Adobe Illustrator

The learning curve begins with Adobe Illustrator.  This was a frustrating project because AI is nothing like any program I have ever used.  I prefer a hands on tutorial instead of trying to view a video and use help files. 

This was a difficult area to try to label especially without knowing any of the tricks of AI. I need lead lines for several of the labels to clearly show the area they represent.  I wasn't able to follow the guidance from the book reference placing text within an area and not having it too crowded.  I felt the harbors had to include the labels within the area and didn't want the text size too small.