Looking For Blank Maps For State/County Stats

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 12:01 pm

I'm looking for some good looking blank U.S. and Wisconsin maps that I can use to automatically generate state and county find maps in the State/County Stats module on the WGA website.

What have you used in the past to manually create these maps? What do you think would work the best in terms of map sizes, colors, etc.?

I think the maps we should consider should be:

- White background, black outline
- No text indicating the state or county (IMHO it makes it too cluttered, especially when scaled down and could affect the fill... but I could be convinced otherwise Wink

)
- Must be fillable with a flood fill (i.e. no open gaps in outlines)
- U.S. map must include Alaska and Hawaii
- Anything else?

Here are links to some of the better blank maps I found online... please share any others that you know about.

U.S. Map #1

U.S. Map #2

WI State Map #1

WI State Map #2

Very Large WI County Map

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:07 pm

I might have a Wisconsin map that would work. What format do you need it in? Currently it is in MicroStation (CAD) but I can export it to AutoCAD (dwg or dxf) or print it to a PDF.

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 2:57 pm

GOJeepers wrote:

I might have a Wisconsin map that would work. What format do you need it in? Currently it is in MicroStation (CAD) but I can export it to AutoCAD (dwg or dxf) or print it to a PDF.

A PDF would work... but if you could somehow convert it into an image file (GIF or JPEG) this would be even better. Resolution of the image file doesn't have to be too high either. A width of 600 or 800 pixels would be OK...

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 3:56 pm

With the resounding success of the badger, I nominate greyhounder to draw some up for you! Razz

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:00 pm

Jeremy wrote:

A PDF would work... but if you could somehow convert it into an image file (GIF or JPEG) this would be even better. Resolution of the image file doesn't have to be too high either. A width of 600 or 800 pixels would be OK...

Can I print and then scan it or would the resolution not be clear enough?

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:05 pm

GeoPink wrote:

With the resounding success of the badger, I nominate greyhounder to draw some up for you! Razz

I believe earlier in the week I told you to "bite me".....

wink

Bec

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:58 pm

GOJeepers wrote:

Can I print and then scan it or would the resolution not be clear enough?

There should be more than enough resolution with a scan of a printout, but you'd need to get the background really white... otherwise the fills could run into problems dealing with the multicolor background (some counties might not fill with color properly).

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:49 pm

I will take care of that when I get back to work on Monday. Hope that is soon enough!

Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 10:46 am

GeoPink wrote:

With the resounding success of the badger, I nominate greyhounder to draw some up for you! Razz

Hey Bec...as proud as we are to sport our Badger shirts, we'd be happy to put in our order for your Map shirt now. The white works fine for us. wink

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:44 am

Here are a couple of maps I created using the software I have here at work. I can create these maps at any size you would like (these are just examples), and I could also put any background colors or any other map features (Title, north arrow, etc) on these maps that you could like with very minimal effort. I did the black and white color scheme that you asked for, but I could change it if you would prefer something different. Let me know, I don't mind helping out with this part of it all if you think these maps would be useful.

Brian

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:14 pm

Thanks for the alternative maps Brian... they look pretty good and are plenty big for display on the web.

The boundaries on the U.S. map are kind of too detailed... look at the Alaska Inside Passage/Panhandle and the Texas Gulf coast. When this map in reduced in size, these details turn into big black blobs. But I'm guessing you have no control over the level of detail...

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 2:22 pm

I remade the maps using gray for the lines instead of black. Cartographically, black is too heavy a color for the lines. Here are the maps with the gray outlines...

Another option is to leave the outline white of Alaska

A third option would be that I can go through and hand redraw some of the areas (around Alaska and Texas) to make them less "busy." That would probably take me a few minutes...I will repost if I get it done before I have to leave.

Brian

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 2:56 pm

Here is the map with the coasts more generalized. I can really edit these maps in any way you would like with no trouble. If you want north arrows or any other map elements I can do that to. Resizing the image is very easy also, I just chose to export it at 100 dpi so it would be larger to look at.

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:52 am

Team B Squared wrote:

Here is the map with the coasts more generalized. I can really edit these maps in any way you would like with no trouble. If you want north arrows or any other map elements I can do that to. Resizing the image is very easy also, I just chose to export it at 100 dpi so it would be larger to look at.

The last version of the U.S. map looks really good. Try exporting it at 50 dpi (which should give a 550 pixel wide image). For the Wisconsin map, I think we'd want that one that is approximately 600 to 700 pixels high to match the scale of the U.S. map (there seems to be a lot of whitespace above and below the WI map that I will probably just crop).

Also it would be great if you could change the background color to the WGA "standard" yellow/tan (RGB FBFBB7 or (251, 251, 183))... that way the maps will match the rest of the site. Hopefully they don't look too ugly using this background color...

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 5:45 am

Here ya go. I like the yellow-tan, but I think that it is pretty bland with the states being filled with white. Here are the maps...

Here are what the maps look like with some color inside each state/county...

I am not sure what exactly you are envisioning here, but if you use the blue fill at that color (for places not yet found) it would look good (IMO) if you used a light red color to fill for areas that have been visited. Here is an example of some maps that we use for our profile.

Let me know if there are any other changes you would like to see, it is really no problem at all as it usually takes me longer to write the post than to make the changes to the maps.

Brian