Establishing harmony

Harmony refers to how well the elements work together. The establishment of harmony is related to balance but involves the development of a good visual hierarchy. Which elements need to be read first, or made to stand out? Which elements need to be subdued for clarity or lack of importance? Is your north arrow vying for attention with your subject material? Is the legend overpowering the title? To build hierarchy, we need to organize our map elements into three principal categories—primary, secondary, and tertiary information. 

The primary information is limited to the key information we are trying to communicate, the map itself. Secondary information includes the title and the legend. If the map is going into a report with a caption, the title might be omitted, in which case the legend is the only piece of secondary information. Everything else is considered tertiary information—the scale bar, the directional indicator, notes and credits, logos, all of it. The following figure demonstrates the sequence in which the map items should get the attention of the reader.

We want our reader to see The Map first, then the Title and Legend to help frame context. The rest of the information is just there for reference—the fine print, if you will. If the reader wants to measure something, they'll hunt out the scale bar; if they want to know which way is north, they'll look for the arrow, but generally they'll assume north is at the top of the page (exception to this is if north is not up then you'll need to place a tiny bit more emphasis on the directional indicator, but don't get carried away):

Tying this back to what we have learned about balance, placing tertiary information in the focus or the field is never a good idea.

In a previous example of the US Counties shown in, Figure 3.4, all of the elements had roughly the same weight, so there wasn't any real sense of what was important. Here's the same map, with the weights changed:

This time, the map pops out a little more prominently, as does the title. The legend is about at the same level as the two inset maps, and the other elements are less prominent.

This hierarchy development also extends to the map itself. The way in which information is brought to the viewer's attention may or may not relate to the order in which your map layers are stacked. The principal component of hierarchy within the map is called the figure-to-ground organization. The figure is defined as the object of attention, standing out from the background. The ground is the background space. In photography, this is sometimes achieved by blurring items in the background, drawing the eye to the figure with a crisp focus. In cartography, we have a number of tools to help us direct the viewer's attention.

Establishing strong figure-ground relationships is mainly about contrast. With mapping, this is often used to describe the contrast between land and water, but can also draw focus to specific parts of the land or ocean while diminishing the importance of other areas. We can alter values, textures, or colors, or add a bold outline to develop a strong edge. Line weights and symbols within the map can draw offerings to key information. Placement on the page and relationship to other elements also help us determine which parts of the map are the important parts as seen in the following figure: 

The previous figure demonstrates the development of figure-to-ground contrast. The previous, figure consists of four parts:

• a: There is no contrast, and the reader is unable to determine for certain what is happening in this picture.
• b: There is some effort to distinguish water from land, and if the reader is familiar with the shape of coastlines, they may be able to determine that the gray area is land, and the white is water.
• c: Further cements this certainty with the addition of roads.
• d: Establishes it through context, readers familiar with the area will recognize the shape of San Francisco Bay. It should be noted that in, Figure 3.12(d), would be ineffective for readers unfamiliar with this shape, and other means would be necessary. The addition of labels, of course, would further improve distinction between land and water, and a strong coastal outline would help focus the eye. 

In our New Zealand map, we can apply the same technique we used in earlier maps, and add a nice, thick coastline to make the land pop. We'll also add some other features to reinforce the impression:

1. Set the Symbology for the NZ outline to black and 3 pt width.
2. Expand the Map Frame in the Contents pane and turn on the Roads and Regions layers in the NZ map.

While this map is less ambiguous than the San Francisco Bay example (Figure 3.12), we now have a clear delineation between land and water. This also makes the islands much heavier and helps retain focus in the center of the page, so it isn't overpowered by the bold title working to balance any potentially heavy legend items.

This hierarchy also applies between important and less important map features as well. We'll spend more time on how to achieve clean, uncluttered maps in Chapter 8, Clean Symbology and Uncluttered Maps; but for now, just be alert to the change in the balance of your map, as you direct the reader's focus through figure-ground contrast.