Map Compositon- There's more to it than it looks!!!!!

Getting the parts of a map to blend is much like making a cake. There is a recipe (procedure) to follow. Apparently, parts of the recipe remain as "family secrets".  I hope to discover more of them as time progresses. Until then, paying attention to the details remain important.  This composition felt more like an experiment in clicking on this or that to see what it did than composing a map.  Learning Adobe Illustrator continues to be a moving challenge.  

It seemed like the Process Summary was more like a novel than a short recipe card.  Looks like the neatline was lost in translation, oh well, this was not easy come, cause it went.

Process Summary  Week 5- Map Composition (Hispanic Pop. S.FL)

1.      This one began innocently enough as an import from R:drive to S:drive in the Week5-Map Composition folder.  Opened it in Adobe Illustrator to see 3 maps, and elements jumbled around.

2.      Saved a copy of the original document as Florida_hispanic2.ai before I began to modify map.

3.      Began to make rectangle, after having difficulty removed it, started over with same file by opening layers to see where everything was. Created new layer for neatline,  stumbled around with the rectangle eventually had one in the neatline layer. (3^rd map with rectangle in NW corner of pic made it fit within just minutes).

4.      Renamed several groups  in various layers for clarity before adjusting any. Ended up with Scale Bar Group in Florida Hispanic. Florida County Bnd layers for single map of Florida.  Made layer for North Arrow, then a group with the North Arrow and N so they would move together.

5.      Rearranged the elements inside the Legend layer, for single grouping. Alternated removing visual (eye) and selecting boxes to narrow which boxes needed to be removed to have one layer box.  Put with  single title label, all colors and measurements in one place. This worked well when changing colors of layers in excerpt map. 

6.      Discovered the isolate mode on layers box (on far top right corner. Used it to isolate counties with shift to highlight counties in groupings for color adjustment.  All counties did not highlight well. Did this at the end and document and I locked up on one another.  Did save doc after each successful change. Which was a keeper later.  (3^rd time, still had issues with this step, but was able to work through it to change percentage colors. Added rectangle around Legend, color choice was wrong. One of my percentage layer choices melted into background. Plan B, there.  Still in 3^rd try, restarted document lost a couple of the <path> color boxes. In Layers, copied a good <path> color box, moved it in. Was able to recolor). Tried to align legend several ways, watched several videos, not successful. 

7.      Made sublayer group of boxes & percentages in Legend. This assisted in changing colors so that they could be locked when adjusting one without disturbing others.   In Legend on 3^rd time, in Type, found dialog box to resize percentage numbers consistently large enough to read.  Also, used transform, scale to increase size of legend to readable size.

8.      On US map, found a way to highlight single State of Florida through grouping and pointing & removing element. Isolated Florida, selected it and changed color to highlight it.  Somehow found out how to  adjust opaqueness of US and fill to enhance its presence on map.  Deleted Alaska & Hawaii since they were extra, took up space and were not part of our study.  Put a grouping around US lower 48, somehow stumbled into the filling area. Was not able to duplicate it as desired later.   Discovered, I had 3 parts to USA section, created group of rectangle, file & states. This worked as unit to move & resize.

9.      Tried to highlight the Florida single inset, was tangled in the color zone with gradients, somehow ended up with a raster, outlined the counties, looked cool but not able to find how to get it to stop. Had issues, just saved and ate supper for strength. On 3^rd try left this locked and just moved it around.  Let this dog lie.

10.  Added a title layer,  selected title mode, typed title, made rectangle, put these both in title layer, lost title somewhere in another layer.  Eventually found it.  Added Name, date, source type at bottom. 

11.  Rechecked my map for export and wham. Part of my Florida raster map was gone, the artboard shape changed and ugh. No time to start over.  It’s not my best, it’s not what I wanted, so I’m turning it in not to miss the deadline.   Will try again another time. Saw I had a few more days. When I stared on 3^rd time whole raster appeared. See 9.

12.  Many times used notes from Week4 for reference. Watched extra segments on Adobe.tv for selecting, layers, grouping etc.  Some were easier to follow than others.  Best thing. Saved this map often.