Hi! This is my graphic set for the Map project!
I decided to compare cost of living in San Francisco and New York City, because I was curious how they stacked up– I had read several articles over the past year when looking into places I might want to work after graduation, and it seemed to be a toss-up which one people claimed was more expensive. I chose to focus on Manhattan within NYC, because this contains the most stereotypical and prototypically-imagined NYC experience.
I based this graphic set off of census numbers, as data from a few other sources. One source, richblockspoorblocks.com proved to have some really interesting data visualization of income numbers based off of the 2013 census, so they were a huge asset– unfortunatly, they charged for a person to use their site for more than a few searches, limiting their helpfulness. Numbeo was useful in providing percentage stack ups by category, based on data in the same census.
When evaluating my final pictured version of this map pack compared to the first version of this graphic (not pictured, for your own good– it was very bad), it is safe to say my final graphic is a solid representation of the data I found. There is obviously room for improvement, especially as this class does not come naturally to me, but I am for the most part immensely proud of what I eventually produced.
Room to Improve:
I could have added more data labels and better call-outs to label cities or landmarks. I tried to do this, but struggled to integrate it without overpowering the other data, so I ended up getting rid of it. If I did a next version of this, that would be what I would strive to find a way to add, to improve the usefulness of the graphic. This considered, I still feel my graphic accomplishes a lot without these labels– thus why I ended up turning it in as-is.
Things I Did Well:
I like my color scheme– It feels very in character and earth-toned. I like my choice to omit water, as it makes it feel cleaner and more modern to me this way (in keeping with the newer flat design styles I see around). I like my key and how I displayed it with circles, and I am really proud of my chosen data displaying method for the bottom 3 graphics, where I made the illustrative objects myself, to provide quick meaning and contribute additional depth to my graphic. I like the way I demonstrated percentage difference in these same images, using scaling and a green bar only measuring change in height to clarify this is the only scaling I am trying to use (as opposed to percentage of the whole object– I chose to use just height scaling as a form of measurement in change, that is). I also was proud of my proportional symbol map to show NYC vs. SF population on the reference map.
I hope you like it! (It took a LOT of hours to make).
This is my graphic pack for the map project! I wanted to compare cost of living for NY, NY and SF, CA.