Lab 5: Splash Screen for Lab 4

The task was to add a splash screen to the previous lab (New York by train). I took the opportunity to do some cleaning up and tweaking. It's a never ending job.

Weekly Map 6: Oil Spill Splash Screen

I found a lot of civil war related splash screens but I wanted a different one. This one is kind of cool. It gives you an introduction to an interactive map. I like the way that enough info is given to get you interested in exploring the rest of the map. The key map to the right is nicely done and tells you what you're looking at right away, in case you didn't know where the Beaufort Sea was.

Link: http://arcticspills.wwf.ca/#intro/

Weekly Map 5: Timeline of Carbon Emissions

I found this map that portrays the timeline of carbon emissions. The content is definitely relevant to what's going on today. I like the way the timeline is set up so you can see the year you're looking at and the total amount of carbon emissions. I also like that you can click on the timeline and place and move the view accordingly. I think this is an effective map.

 

Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/carbon_dioxide_emissions_by_country_over_time_the_worst_global_warming_polluters.html

Weekly Map 4: Morphin' Land Area to Population

This is a cool little animation map. It starts with the corresponding land areas of the world countries and morphs into areas representing the population for each country. This type of map is called a cartogram or an anamorphic map. It's a little bit cartoonish but it can be effective if used well. I think this is a good example. It definitely shows you where the highest populations are. 

 

 

Link: http://www.worldmapper.org/animations/wm01to02.html

Lab 4: Traveling from New York by Train in the 1930s

This lab was a bit of a challenge. We were given the task to animate a map of the US showing rate of travel from NY city, by train, in the 1930s. The object was to use "tweens" or in between shapes (shapes morphing into another shape). Tweens come in shape or motion tweens. Another term used for this type of animation is morphin'. Tweens come in shape tweens, like the one used to indicate distance, and motion tweens, like the one used for the timeline. This last one could've been done using a shape tween as well. Big lesson learned here; perfect all of your shapes in one layer before you start dropping them into specific or final layers. This is was turned this into a challenge for me, as I didn't perfect the shapes as a group. As a result I had all kinds of unexpected things going on as I played the animation. Overall a fun, challenging project with lots of potential uses.

Weekly Map 3: How Americans Get to Work by County

This map shows the predominant way people get to work by county. I like the fact that you can turn on and off all the different categories. Like other maps in this format, which is pretty common by the way, you can roll-over a particular county and get detailed info. You can also zoom in and out.

Link: http://flowingdata.com/2015/01/20/how-americans-get-to-work/

Lab 3: Republican Election Wins Map

For this lab we used the same base map as lab 2. We were tasked with showing five different presidential election results for one party. We had to use transparency to create a simulated "choropleth" effect. We also used on/off buttons for the different categories. I'm getting better at navigating Flash but I still think it's not exactly an intuitive application.