Map Design and Typography

 

For all the labels, two general categories were used to decide which font to use; a sans serif font (Verdana) was used for manmade structures and city names while a serif font (Times New Roman) was used for natural features. 

 

General – With this being a map features near San Francisco, the label for San Francisco needed to be the most prominent.  I conveyed this by having it be the only emboldened font and I also made it the largest.  For the Marin Peninsula, Angel Island, and Treasure Island, slightly curved text was used with a slight shadow behind the font to differentiate them from the city names (Sausalito and San Francisco).  Though they each had a different font, the shadow and letter spacing of the natural features contrasted them even more.

 

Water – The water features used a blue hue (HEX# 1CA3EC) that was slightly darker than the color used to represent water on the map.  I increased the letter spacing to 30%, the word spacing to 150% - 200%, and used italic serif font to label the three water features.  For the largest of these features (San Francisco Bay), I centered the font’s position, used a large font size, and placed it in the middle of the large water body to try and reduce the amount of empty space on the map with a label. 

 

Park Names – I used sans serif font that was smaller than the city names as these are smaller features than whole cities.  I used a point label placement for the small Lincoln Park, but was able to fit text into the areas of the other two park areas.  In these, I increased the letter and word spacing, however the text came out looking bold (thought it is not) because of the green background rather than the dull yellow of the shoreline polygon.

 

Landmarks and Topographic Features – To stay consistent, though Nob Hill and Russian Hill are in the topographic feature category in the instructions, I see these as manmade therefore these had the same font as the city names, albeit smaller in size.  I used point label placement for those locations and the Golden Gate Bridge.  The point label for the Golden Gate Bridge was primarily so a floating label in that waterbody would not look odd being so close the Golden Gate waterbody label but with different font and font color.  For the Twin Peaks and San Miguel Hills features, I used curved text and serif font to represent a natural feature in the area, like the island and peninsula features.